


Set My Soul In Darkness

by Ajali



Category: The Musketeers (2014), d'Artagnan Romances (Three Musketeers Series) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Aramis Whump, Aramis!whump, Blood and Torture, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt Aramis, Hurt!Aramis, Hurt/Comfort, Medieval Torture, Mute's Bridle, Muzzles, Past Torture, Strappado, Torture, bastinado
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-21 19:18:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 27,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3702851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ajali/pseuds/Ajali
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the meme on the BBCMusketeers kink website "Would love to see a fic where Rochefort does more than just chain Aramis up in the dungeon. He totally kicks his ass instead." </p><p>His eyes rolled heavenward, black with desperation, a silent plea for strength from an indifferent God, blood instead of prayer all his tongue could yield.</p><p>"Fitting, don't you think? The Queen of Torments for committing treason with the Queen of France?"</p><p>It started as a small fill, and has grown organically into something resembling an actual plot with character analysis, anatomical research, attempts at historical accuracy, and a hint of the history of opium poppies.<br/>And torture. Seriously, I could write a thesis on torture techniques and psychology now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Silence

**Author's Note:**

> There were actually three prompts requesting this theme, so it turns out I'm not alone in my depravity. First fic I've written, except for a couple of one-shots ten years ago. As a general warning, if you are not ok with torture in your fic content, go back now. This is unashamed Aramis pain. Very little plot. Enjoy!

He couldn't stay away, it seemed, like nails lifting the scab time and again from a bothersome wound. He was at the door to the prison cell before the man had been returned from the trial.

"Lying under oath, Musketeer? You have damned your immortal soul."

The condemned man straightened further, wrapped in defiance like a cape, eyes bright with mocking laughter. As if he wasn't being led in chains to his final stay before execution. As if he wasn't surrounded by hostile guards. As if he were somehow greater than the First Minister of France that had just signed his death warrant. Rochefort bristled at the mans lack of humility, the courage of a simple soldier, perhaps too stupid to be afraid. He held his ire, savoured it, pushed it down and added it to the fuel he was yet to use. Rochefort was a patient man.

"You have condemned your lover the queen. I offered you the chance to save her. Now she will pay for your stupidity too. Was she just another conquest for you?" That got a reaction. Aramis stepped forward, shackles clinking as he balled his fists.

"You snake. How long have you been a Spanish agent? You will not succeed. France will know you for the traitor you are!"

Rochefort surged forward at the words, gripped the other man by the lapels of his doublet, allowing a long moment to pass before lifting his hand to cup his captives cheek. He relished the surprise he saw there, the flicker of uncertainty.

"You just can't help yourself, can you? You lie and you lie. With death so near for you, I would have thought it prudent not to stain your soul further. I will help you."

Suddenly, savagely, he struck his captive in the stomach and in the same move, dealt his face a vicious backhand. At a signal, a guard held him fast from behind, the chain between his hands drawn tight across his flat belly as he reeled.

"Silence him." A guard stepped forward, iron gag held before him. There was recognition in Aramis' eyes but nowhere to retreat to as his head was held fast, recoiling, still fighting for air, the barbed plate cracked against his teeth and made him retch where it hit the back of his throat. He surged backward, twisting his head against the invasion but chained and held fast was helpless to stop the device being locked tight around the back of his neck. Jaw stretched uncomfortably around the metal box, the barbs piercing his tongue and holding it down, more scraped painfully against his palette, breath coming short and fast through the tiny breathing hole, Rochefort saw what he had been looking for.

Fear, at last, unsuppressed in those dark eyes, and something inside him clenched in satisfaction.

At a signal the guards stepped back, released the mans arms. Predictably he raised them, fingers scrabbling and tearing at the lock, pulling at the curve of metal that trapped and obscured his jaw. The musketeer tried to speak, tried to spit curses at his tormentor, and Rochefort smiled openly at his flinch when the barbed contraption mangled both his words and his tongue in the attempt. He retched again as the metal pushed into the back of his throat, and a heat ignited in Rochefort's belly at the moment true horror entered the other mans eyes.

Whatever power he'd had in sweet words that had seduced the queen, Rochefort had taken from him. Whatever comfort in prayer for the condemned man, he'd stolen from him. Whatever shields of wit or defiance he'd hoped to guard himself with in his last days had been stripped.

"Not enjoying that? I'm doing this to help you, to preserve your ungrateful soul against your foul lies, Musketeer." He savoured the last word, twisting it as though it were some provoking insult, and paused, as if a thought had just occurred to him, as if he hadn't been looking forward to this moment.

"Although, you're disgraced, a traitor to your king and to France." A huff of protest escaped the muzzled man in front of him, the words landing where he wanted. He stood, still gripping the device that muted him, fingers trying to slip under the rim of the face plate, trying to drag forward the metal in his mouth to ease the pressure against the back of his throat, breath quick and eyes wild.

"No longer a musketeer. Unfit for the uniform of the King. Remove it."

 

He fought. Of course he fought, too proud to submit to this new humiliation. But there were four guards and he was chained. Flung to the ground and a kick to the face, the iron bridle that wrapped around and inside him twisting, the sound of teeth splitting against the metal, barbed ridges slicing the inside of his mouth and blood pooling in the back of his throat and dribbling to the stone flags below him, brutal kicks to his ribs and belly, crushing the air from his lungs and the chain between his hands grabbed, stretched forward and stepped on, unable to curl in on himself to defend against the violence, the fingers of his right hand caught under a heavy boot and ground against the stone.

Knives slipped under his doublet, sliced through it and was pulled away in ribbons, boots yanked from his feet and leather trews pulled off as well, pauldron slashed away and spat upon. Even so, when the guards pulled away, it didn't take him long before he was trying to rise to his feet.

Awkwardly, injured hand folded to his chest, shirt torn and in disarray and alternating between clawing at the wall of his prison to drag himself up and cradling his damaged face. Rocheforts henchmen were not unscathed. Four against one and still their injuries included a smashed nose, a split lip, a sprained arm.

For a moment Rochefort felt a grudging respect, at his courage, his inability to submit. Before he crushed that feeling. Rochefort was a patient man.

"I will break you," he promised.

 

A glint of gold in the torchlight, Anne's crucifix still resting against her lovers heart. Cold fury threatened to overwhelm him, at the sight of his gift to HIS Anne when she was still a princess, his pledge of affection, his secret claim on her heart. Squandered, given to this mere soldier, whilst he languished in a Spanish jail. He stepped forward and twisted his hand into the mans dark hair, dragging him upright to hiss in his ear "You dare to flaunt your treasonous affair still?"

Chained hands clutched at his sleeve but a dark gaze met his cold one unflinchingly. His hand slipped down the warm chain to the golden crucifix, fingers caressing the gilt edges.

Rochefort felt his blood stirring at the memory of gifting the fourteen year old bride-to-be with the cross, her guileless eyes wide, rosebud lips and the soft swell of young breasts. The feeling twisted, soured by her recent rejection. A tear slipped his remaining eye and he raised the cross to his lips and kissed it, warm from Aramis' skin.

Those chained hands were trying to push him away now, he realised, disgust rolling off the man before him. He loosed the grip in his hair, only to twist the gold links together around his throat, dragging the chain through the thin rivulets of blood there.

"This should never have been yours. She should have been mine. She should have chosen me," he hissed to the cross in his hand. He reached up to remove the chain from the queens lover, and if the man had fought for his uniform, fought against the humiliation of being muzzled and stripped, it was nothing compared to how he fought for that necklace.

Rochefort was reeling from a fist that thundered across his face and sent to the ground from a savage headbutt that cracked his nose. The guards rushed in and beat Aramis to the flagstone floor, unchecked violence until he was yelping in pain.

"Enough."

Rochefort found himself laughing. The guards dragged their prisoner to his knees, swaying in their grip, one eye swelling, breath hitching. Rochefort reached down and rubbed his thumb through the blood from a split in the other mans temple. Aramis pulled away and his hand tightened cruelly in his hair.

"You are brave, I'll concede that. But it will not avail you."

He was still fighting the bridle, Rochefort noticed, with his left hand. Long fingers curling around the device, questing at the lock, fine tremors running through them as he sought to dislodge it. The fingers of his other hand coiled slack against his chest, misshapen and a livid purple. For the bridle to be taking precedence over his broken hand in this way, the agony it was causing must be exquisite.

He couldn't help the way his breath caught in pleasure at that knowledge. He swiped at the thin trickle of blood from his own nose.

"That was bracing. But for striking the First Minister of France? Bow before me. Bow down." He laughed at the venomous glare the disgraced musketeer shot him.

"I know. Still too proud. Don't worry. I will help you learn your place," he promised him fervently.

"Put this man in strappado," he commanded the guards.


	2. Suspension

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Getting a bit graphic here, not for the faint of heart.
> 
> I am a horrible, horrible person.

He visibly flinched, startling against the hands that held him, released one manacled wrist and refastened it behind his back. A rope was tied to the chain between his hands. His eyes rolled heavenward, black with desperation, a silent plea for strength from an indifferent God, blood instead of prayer all his tongue could yield.

Perhaps it worked. Rochefort watched with interest as first the desperation, then the fear were pulled back from the surface, something else, something harder rushing to fill their space. Aramis met his eyes calmly, displaying nothing but his customary mocking laughter. Though he recognised it as the shield it was, Rochefort couldn't help but bristle at the scorn he felt directed at him.  
The Musketeer was condemned, kneeling in chains and muzzled before him, yet still he towered over him, HIM, the First Minister of France. Was this what Anne saw in him? In the knowledge of his own torment and death, he was still unconquered. Defiant.  
He pulled back his anger. Rochefort was a patient man.

"That laughter will be the first thing I take from you," he hissed. "You will know your place soon enough."  
He signalled the guard, who pulled the rope fastened to the wall. The rope hooked over a beam set in stone near the ceiling, trailing down to the captives restraints.

He gasped as his arms were yanked upwards, scrambling to his bare feet, but he did not break Rochefort's gaze, straight-backed and strong. The guards let him stand, and Rochefort signalled again.  
His arms raised behind him to the height of his neck now, he was unable to retain his proud stance, shoulders rotated unnaturally at an angle that would soon become painful, his spine arching forward like a cat to compensate, heels lifting upwards to ease the pressure on his arms.

Rochefort allowed himself a smile and drew in close, his breath stirring the hair curled round the shell of his ear. "I told you that you would bow before me."  
Aramis snarled and lashed out with his foot, catching Rochefort a glancing blow to the shin. There was no power behind it from the angle he was at, like being buffeted by a large cat or a strong breeze, and he laughed as he signalled again.

This time there was no room for his body to compensate and he cried out, short, before swallowing it. His body forced to straighten in his bonds, arms locked at a sharp angle, legs straining as the tips of his toes took his full weight.  
His eyes watered in pain as the muscles at his shoulder joint, stretched beyond endurance suffered their first tears, and Rochefort pressed his body in close to cup the stricken mans face, thumbs brushing away the water tenderly.  
Already his breath was coming in sharp pants, his lungs compressed by the weight of his own body, and a wildness was in his eyes as he strained to catch enough air.

The iron gag was warm under Rocheforts palms, blood and saliva trickling through the tiny breathing hole to dry in his short beard. Tenderly, he lifted a forefinger and pressed it to the opening, stopping Aramis from drawing breath.  
Raw panic crashed through the defences in his eyes as he found what little air he could draw through the crusting blood in his nose was insufficient, he was twisting his head weakly in his strict binds. Rochefort cupped his other hand gently around the nape of his neck, holding his head still even as he spasmed for breath.

It took as little strength as pinioning a small bird, he marvelled, and he felt his own breath catch. All the power in the body under his hands, the skill and strength that had raised him to the pride of the Musketeer regiment, useless. Impotent. It was Rochefort who had the power in the end.

"Everything that drew her to you, Aramis, I will take from you before you die."  
He pressed his knee between the other mans thighs, unbalancing him as he tried to twist away. He clenched his hand savagely in his victims hair, pulling his head forward as he pushed hard on the gag.

Aramis bucked frantically, choking on blood and metal as the barbs tore deeper into his mouth and throat.  
"Your voice. Your strength. Your wit. You are mine now, to do with as I please. As the queen will soon be mine. She should have chosen me." He pressed his forehead against his prisoners and closed his good eye, holding the tableau for a long moment, wishing it was his queen he could hold this close, this pliantly, imagining the body shuddering against his was his Anne's, and that the movements were her pleasure. Until he felt the other mans weight settle against his thigh, strength spent. 

"Don't swoon on me yet, I have so much more to share with you."  
He stepped back a pace, withdrawing his support but also his hands. Blood rushed through the hole in the front of the iron bridle, bubbling noisily and Aramis was free to breath again, eyes glazed, scarcely conscious, body stretched taut as he tried to find purchase against a floor that was barely there.

This time, when Rochefort reached around his neck to remove the crucifix, he flinched but could offer no resistance, could only watch with tormented eyes.

Another sign to the guards, this time it took two of them to haul down the rope and refasten it. This time his toes left the floor, legs kicking and missing the ground by inches, shoulders fully rotated against their nature and the weight beginning to separate the joints, ligaments tearing. This time, he could not hold back his scream, except that required a deeper breath than he could take, pressure on his lungs prevented enough air to even do that, the muscles of his chest now forming a tight band around his ribs, and all that came out was a helpless keening. 

Short panting breaths that plumed white in the chill air between them punctuated the sound. Rochefort pressed his hands to the tight muscles of his prisoners belly, feeling his diaphragm spasm, running them up to hold his rivals torso, thrilling at the vibrations from the muted screams and the juddering as the muscles of his ribs strained to lift his entire body to breathe.  
With a push to set the helpless mans body swinging, he brandished the crucifix.

"Now to pay Queen Anne a visit. She was the only thing I thought of, you know? They would do unspeakable things to my body, and all I could see was her. My saviour in the dark. My saviour in torment. My love."  
He paused. He had forgotten himself. Forgotten her rejection, so recent the wound in his heart still seeped, as did the wound to his eye. He had sought solace in those memories, comfort in the familiar litany. But reality crashed down on him. The keening from his prisoner continued, distracting him.  
"And you took her from me."

He wet his lips, shook his head to clear it.  
"I must go to the Queen. She will need me. And I must decide what to do with your son."  
Rochefort turned and left, but fancied he heard a sob before the iron door clanged behind him, leaving Aramis in darkness and torment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I totally didn't loop a belt over the bannister, grab it with my hands behind myself and walk down the stairs to research the physiology of these scenes. Nope. That would be stupid.  
> Honestly, do not do that. I have hyper-flexible shoulders which means they can partially separate with no damage and I did not take it into full suspension. You will injure yourself if you try.
> 
> The 'Iron Gag' and 'Strappado' are period-accurate methods of torture. The iron gag is variant on the Scolds Bridle but seems to have been more employed by the Inquisition. Strappado is still used today under the name Palestinian hanging and has been responsible for deaths of people in United States custody in the Iraqi prison Abu Ghraib. 
> 
> I need some comfort after the hurt now, after researching and writing that scene. Any Musketeers going to volunteer with what I'm doing to their brother?


	3. Thaw

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because who hasn't had a love unrequited?  
> Who hasn't felt that if you could only cut open your own skull and show them the love contained within that they must reciprocate?

She would not look at him, facing the window, and once again he bristled at the humility he could not help but feel in her presence. His Queen, his cold Queen, calculated passivity and frosty exterior, like a winter sun, muted splendour, though refusing to warm the air around him.

So similar to himself, could she not see it?

"I bring you a gift."  
Her response this time was very different to the last time he had said that. Then she had been full of laughter and eager curiosity. Now, she did not turn, did not move. Perhaps her back straightened a little. Then she spoke.

"I want nothing from you." Her tone was clipped, not a hint of emotion in it, except scorn. It was more scorn than words.  
He moved forward a pace, stepping around her to enter her peripheral view.  
"You may want to reconsider. I am returning a gift."  
He held the crucifix up, the chain coiling behind his fingers and the ruby studded cross catching in the sunlight, throwing rich flashes through the air as it swung.

He saw the moment curiosity and dread made her glance at his fingers.  
Something flickered across those regal features, the beginnings of expressions that her training subdued. She betrayed herself though, by not taking her eyes off the cross, gold set with red and a patina of blood coating it.

"He is already dead then?"  
Cracks were appearing in her frosted veneer, grief sharpened her voice. Rochefort savoured it for a long moment.  
"No, but soon."  
She inhaled sharply.  
"The blood?"  
"He hangs, muzzled and in strappado in his prison cell. Fitting, don't you think? The Queen of Torments for committing treason with the Queen of France?"  
She had to find a seat then, her legs failing under the burden of knowledge.  
"You are to be his executioner then? As you were judge and jury?"  
There it was. A fierceness she had not carried before. Had the careless fire of her lover thawed her a little? Kindled her living flesh beneath the cool exterior of refinement and obedience? She had not thawed for him. They were the same, he and his Queen. Could she not see that?  
"No. I will cut him down before he suffocates. A death like Christ's is hardly fitting for a traitor. And when I am finished with him, he will go broken to his death. He is fierce and strong and I will break him. And all of France will see how I have tamed your wild Musketeer."

Her hands twitched as if to hide her face, but she was too well-trained for that. She would not break so easily, his queen.  
"This is madness, Rochefort," she breathed.  
"No," he crooned. "It is love. Love is pain and torment."  
She smiled then, tremulous and sad, and it was not thoughts of he that coaxed a break in her carved visage.  
"It is no such thing."

He was kneeling before her now, hands hovering but not daring to touch her. Not yet. The pieces weren't in place yet. Tenderly he let the crucifix swing between them, blood and gold flashed blinding into his remaining eye.  
"This is the price of your love."  
He tossed the bloodied crucifix to her silk-clad thighs.  
She did not move but he felt her recoil.  
"My love for you is an agony worse than any torture," he continued "and he should suffer no less."  
He searched her face for the cracks he knew must be forming, but found nothing. There was no proof to be had there. 

Frustrated, he stood and turned a pace or two, unable to bear her stoic silence. He had laid his soul bare to her, he had tried to hurt her, to repay his own pain with the details of his vengeance, and he still could not touch her. No matter, he could touch something of hers. He could hurt something of hers. She didn't have to show it for him to know the agony she was suffering. The same agony he felt at the knowledge of the carnal pleasures his Queen and her Musketeer had shared.  
It should have been him. Could she not see?

He turned back to her, to plead for her affection once more, to see her sculpted hands had moved, still in her lap but covering the crucifix, as if to shield it, as if to protect it from him. Proof if ever he needed it.

The rage he had trammelled within him spilled over. He saw it now. She would never love him. Aramis would always eclipse him, with the smile in his eyes and his free and easy laugh, the daring of a soldier, the vitality of his body, the famed skill with his hands with battlefield surgery, sharpshooting, women. His lower status didn't matter, his unsuitability didn't matter, the fact that he could offer nothing didn't matter. He drew women to him like moths to a burning torch and that had stolen his Queen from him. He was fire and she was ice and they should have destroyed each other, yet they had not, so now he had to do it. But even when he died his memory would eclipse Rochefort.

Something savage thundered through him, all the hell of destructive emotions that he had been saving for when they were useful.  
"I must unmake him then."  
Death would not destroy what he is now, but to be unmade and the broken vessel displayed mewling before death, perhaps that image would eclipse the memory of the hero, the romantic, the courtier. If everyone's last memory of Aramis was horror, he could no longer eclipse Rochefort. The spell would be broken and Anne would see him for who he truly was, would look at him with new eyes and an open heart. 

But first, Aramis must be unmade. It was always going to come to this, he mused. But first, he must not be allowed to slip away in gentle suffocation. His vengeance would come to nought if he were to die so soon.  
"I will unmake him," he re-avowed, pitched loud enough for her ears, and exited the room, leaving her aching in his wake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, research indicates that strappado was known as the Queen of Torments. It asphyxiates by much the same means as crucifixion. Be prepared for more medical research in the next chapter.


	4. Follow Me Down (to Hell)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to see Aramis this chapter, not for the faint of heart. No, seriously. Nothing nice happens here. Warnings for medieval torture.
> 
> I'm experimenting with a new voice this chapter, let me know what you think.

She startled when she heard his footsteps approach, and by the time he loomed dark in the doorway her belly surged under the cruel grip of nausea. His voice was quiet and his colourless eye cold and she barely heard him over the rushing of her heart in her ears.

"Come."  
"But...the Dauphin!" Her voice was weak, she hated how thin it sounded, how her protests were more of a query.  
"Leave the Royal Bastard and come with me. Obey."  
His tone was hard, she dare not refuse, so she laid the sleeping infant in his cradle and followed Rocheforts retreating form.

At the entrance to the prison she faltered, fearful of the place.  
"Where are we going?"  
He made no reply, did not even turn to look at her, so sure of her obedience was he. As though a cord bound her to him, she followed again, tugged along helplessly as if he were the devil and the door was the entrance to hell. She shuddered as she passed over the threshold, unwilling yet unable to make her body refuse as the darkness swallowed her.  
Her feet faltered in the darkness, but he was silhouetted against a distant torch, so she followed reluctantly, lifting her silks to keep them from the dank flagstones. Torches and turns and corridors later, Rochefort stopped, and was in conversation with a guard posted outside a door by the time she had caught up.

"Where are we going?" she repeated. She tried to put more force in her voice but it died before it left her throat, sounding more like a whine to her ears, and she hated it.  
"To see what we have created." He looked at her then, studying her, but she could not hold his gaze.  
Fortunately he was distracted by the door clanging open. He strode through, into the cell, and she felt like she could breathe again. She hesitated a moment, he had not said to follow him but he hadn't told her to stay. Reluctantly she entered the room as he was placing a torch into a sconce set in the stone wall, to illuminate the deep cell.

And she recoiled in horror. A little scream escaped her, for a heartbeat she thought a corpse swung before her, hanging from the ceiling. As her eyes adjusted she saw he hung from chains at his wrists, not rope around the neck.  
And then a new horror hit her and she tried to retreat from the knowledge, from the awful reality.  
It was Aramis. Her sweet Aramis, who had made her know love and taken it away again, who held her tenderly and betrayed her terribly, who shadowed her every thought despite her pain. Here, bloodied and chained and twisted horribly from the rafters, still as death except a faint mist before him in the bitter cold of the dungeon and she shrieked as Rochefort enfolded her from behind, preventing her retreat, and she couldn't run away from the nightmare before her, forced to take in every awful detail.

"No, do not turn away. You must look at what we created, Marguerite."  
"What we....I don't understand. I did not do this!" She cried, tears making tracks down her cheeks again, tears again, she felt like she had been crying forever.  
"Your testimony sealed his fate. You know his sentence. Do you think the punishment required for high treason is gentle or easy? You did this as much as me." His voice a sibilance, was the devil this persuasive?  
She felt his palm strike her face, and yelped although there wasn't enough force to hurt.  
"Do not close your eyes. Look." He commanded. She hadn't even realised her eyes were closed.  
"Look!" he barked.

And so she did, trembling at the sight before her. His white shirt was bibbed red with blood, but she could not tell from where it came. It was torn to expose his flank, heavy bruising marring his junction of his ribs. His feet were bare, dangling slack nearly a foot from the stone, his hands were purple and the shape of claws and his torso was twisted oddly, head caught between his arms and resting on his chest, dark curls hiding his face.

Slowly, so slowly the ropes were turning him round, she could see now a wide iron band across his mouth, locked at the base of his skull, a thin ooze of bloody saliva slid from a hole in the centre to wet his chest. His eyes were half open, and locked on hers, agony rolling off him.  
Her hands fluttered to cover her mouth, unable to articulate the awful feelings she contained.  
Rochefort was still wrapped around her like a lover, without his strength she might have fallen.  
"Magnificent, is it not," he breathed. It was not a question. "His body is a canvas for our revenge."  
"I never wanted this," she sobbed.  
"Of course you did. He took your honour and used you, he lied to you for months, he sullied you and tore out your heart and crushed it. He hurt you. He deserves this."  
"No-one deserves this." It was scarcely a whisper.  
"You don't believe that. Now he knows what it's like to suffer. Now he will know our pain."  
She did not even try to break his unwelcome grip. There was no point. She couldn't free herself from his arms any more than she could free her heart of Aramis.

"What have you done to him? Why is he bleeding?"  
"Insults and lies were all he would say, so I took away his voice. That gag is used during the trials of heretics in Spain to stop their screams interrupting the auto de fe. This one is modified after the fashion of the branks, and is set with spikes. They gouge the tongue and the roof of his mouth. A perpetual wound, for as long as the muzzle is worn." His voice was breathless with joy, the words caressed lovingly, and she shuddered at the touch of a creature so dark.

"He cannot speak. He cannot swallow. He can only hang there and bleed." His breath misted out and wrapped around her, she couldn't help but inhale it, share his air, and she could feel the rot at Rocheforts core contaminate her too.  
"The pain, I'm told, is maddening. Once tasted, people will do anything to avoid it again." She would stop her ears if she could, but she couldn't break that agonised gaze, his pain tangible in the air, thick and cold as the scant vapour from his lungs. He was completely aware, and completely helpless.

She felt frozen, time felt frozen, the moment seemed endless, awful, her whole life contracting around this one moment and it felt like reality would never expand to include anything else again.  
Then Aramis spasmed.  
And time started again.  
He spasmed again, and all at once she realised there was no mist between them, no breath expelled.  
"He's not breathing!" she cried.  
"No. He can't."  
"Why?"  
"He has to lift his whole body to take a breath, and the muscles he must use are spent."  
"But he is so strong," she whispered.  
"He's been there near an hour. Exhaustion is taking him. And when it does he will suffocate." There was a sick glee in his voice.

She moved, somehow. Flung herself to her knees at her former lovers feet, wrapping her thin arms around his calves and trying to lift him, straining to take his weight herself. At first, nothing, then she felt him weakly press against her, rallying through his exhaustion to lift himself up, to take the air denied to him. He managed two breaths before Rochefort snarled a hand in her hair and flung her bodily to the ground. She still had hold of Aramis body and there was a yelp as he was jolted, the air she had helped him take wasted, body set swinging helplessly.  
Rochefort snapped his fingers and two guards moved to the rope at the wall, she hadn't even noticed them in the room before, her fear and Aramis' pain eclipsing all else. They pulled, the rope creaked and he was hoisted towards the ceiling, four feet, six, eight.  
"Let him down," she begged, hiccuping on her words.  
"Please, just let him down."  
"Please, just let him down!" Rochefort repeated, mocking. He gripped her upper arm and helped her to her feet.  
"Of course," he replied, his lips split in a devils smile.  
A whine, an actual whine came from the figure twisting above them, she didn't understand why. She sagged in relief when Rochfort raised a hand to the guards, four fingers extended.  
Aramis dropped.

But not to the ground. His fall had been stopped four feet from the ground, his full weight crashing onto his damaged shoulders, crashing through them, and the sound he made as his joints ruptured brought her to her knees.  
Rochefort was laughing with the other men, she was crying, but underpinning the awful symphony was a sound like that of a dying dog she had once seen crushed under the wheel of a carriage.

Half blinded by tears, she did not see Rochfort move, but she did see Aramis drop again, this time to the unforgiving floor, striking his heel and his hip and his brow as his feet failed to find purchase. She scrambled to his ragged form, bloody and shuddering, breath white and rapid now his lungs were released, and with that release the freedom to voice his pain, guttural peals she feared would never stop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that's stage two of strappado completed.  
> Do you want stage three next? Or something else? Or do you think he deserves a rescue?


	5. Strike

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Medieval torture accuracy ahoy - according to several sources including 'Torture and Democracy' and a few medical journals dealing with the physiological effects of torture, bastinado really does have that affect on the nerves. Bastinado or falaka is still common today especially in the middle east, particularly in areas where they want to hurt prisoners but don't want huge human rights issues, so ones at least aspiring to trade and inclusions into western commerce. Done carefully the most physical signs are largely undetectable to the casual observer after a couple of days.  
> Countries which aren't involved in the opinions of the West don't give a monkeys and usually leave visible torture signs on ther victims to subdue and terrorise the population.
> 
> This chapter really did require wrestling to the ground. Worryingly, I am struggling to get into anybody's head except Rocheforts. But perhaps he's the closest to the narrator as he is the only one with any real knowledge about what's going on.

She hovered ineffectually over his stricken frame, wanting to soothe and comfort, wanting to help but afraid to hurt him further. Rochefort was beside her again like a solid darkness, his satisfaction a living thing that was feeding off the flesh of his subjects before him. Aramis was still making a terrible sound, rough and animalistic, the noise chafing at her soul, his eyes squeezed shut. Her hands landed feather-light against his spine but dared not do more, his cries traveling through her fingers into her heart.

Rocheforts hands were suddenly on hers, then under and around, and he scraped her fingers up her former lovers flesh to the junction of his shoulders, corded and misshapen, the rounded end of his bone a prominent lump.

"It's a pain unlike anything he is used to. There's no defence against it, nothing to brace against. It threatens the integrity of the body at the same time as the suffocation attacks the mind, suffusing it with terror. Slow suffocation can break even the strongest men."

His voice was calm, almost reverent. She felt sick.

"Shall we hoist him up again or shall we pick something else?"

Mutely she shook her head, trying to understand what he was asking of her.

"No," she whispered.

"Again then."

He released her then, firming his grip instead on his prisoner and rolling him over to face them. There was a muffled thump and mercifully the dreadful noise from Aramis stopped.

"Hmm, the shoulder has righted itself." He sounded almost regretful. "No matter."

He rose and left her, but his darkness remained. She collapsed over Aramis, his cries stilled now but his body trembling, pain or cold set his flesh quivering beneath her.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," she gasped. "I didn't mean for....I couldn't stop him....I never wanted...I'm sorry!" Her brow was pressed to his dark curls and he lay panting under her, helpless to respond. Soon, too soon, and the demon she had sold her soul to was once more at her back, fingers curling into her flesh.

"Get him up," softly, voice saturated with a smile. "We will drop him again."

She felt a thrill of fear in the body beneath her, perhaps she heard him choke on the syllable for 'no' or perhaps that was her. She couldn't watch that again and she pushed away the men grasping at Aramis with her little strength. She felt herself being lifted by her throat and she half hoped Rochefort might kill her for her sins and then she wouldn't have to watch what they were doing to her proud soldier.

Impossibly, Aramis intervened. Aramis saved her.

He lashed out with his feet, driving into Rocheforts knee, his eyes black with the knowledge of the retribution he was earning but snarling his defiance anyway. Rochefort released the grip he had in her hair and throat and she stumbled from him, shrinking away even as he advanced like a demon upon the man chained defenceless at his feet.

"You will regret that," he promised, unable to keep his dark desires from his voice. At first Aramis bravery had inspired him, but now it angered him, the mans steadfast refusal to break. What horrors did he have to visit upon him before the man would yeild? He was exhausted and afraid, he could see it in the tremors that shook his prone frame, the apprehension in his eyes, but somehow had the gall to provoke him further. He kicked him, once, twice, aiming for the tender flesh of his belly and rewarded as he folded beneath his boot.

"You won't do that again," he hissed. "You won't be able to do that again. Bring me a pole."

His hands twitched, perhaps attempting to form a fist and Aramis inhuman defiance broke the last restraints he had on his temper. What would it take to douse this wretch's fire? He fell on him, took his legs and looped a rope around them, around again and through, pulling tightly, the cord was thin and would cut him quickly if he struggled. He would struggle.

Rochefort grasped the proffered pole, the length of a man and the thickness of a wrist, and lashed his victims ankles to the centre before letting the wood clatter to the floor. Aramis gazed up in pain and confusion, pulling awkwardly at his bonds, the wood grating clumsily across the stone.

"Please, please, you have won, you've got what you want. Please leave him alone!" The woman was wailing again, distraught at the war between their desire and who she thought she was.

"Nobody else will offer you your vengeance. You should thank me for what I offer you. Now unless you desire to take his place, be silent." She quieted, and he turned to his prey.

He had fancied Anne the Guinevere to his Lancelot but now he knew that to be a dream. He could not even claim to be Arthur. Aramis was Lancelot, he was the villain, and if villain he was cast then villain he would be and as the treasonous lovers of old perished, so must they.

Thoughts of strappado gone, a desire for blood in its place, he recalled his own dread at being subjected to this next torment, and though they had taken care not to break his skin too often, years later he still suffered from the pain after long days on his feet. He would take no such care with Aramis.

"There is something special about this next one," he found himself telling Marguerite. The poor girl was sobbing wretchedly over the Musketeer, clearly broken by her love for the fool.

"In Spain they call this bastinado. Most places of the body, when o'er-stimulated with pain, recognise it and silence those messages," he continued. He was not so broken but felt no less damaged by his Anne. He just wanted her to fix him as she had promised so often in his dreams.

"The soles of the feet, like the chambers of the heart, have no such defence against damage. And each time they are hit, the pain worsens. It intensifies, and kindles the nerves in all the rest of the body until it feels like your soul has been set aflame. Until you are screaming with every touch. Any touch."

He shuddered then, memory and anticipation and lust forming an unholy alliance in his blood. Feet and heart. You don't notice the importance of either until they are damaged. Broken.

He watched Marguerite with interest as she battled with herself, between the sweet succour of vengeance and the social mores of her sex, being gentle and kind did not marry well with the bloodlust he was awakening in her.

His well-trained guards lifted the wood and braced it between them at the height of their waists, and Rocheforts world narrowed to himself and Aramis. The first stroke fell, a dry slap against the arches of his feet. Aramis didn't react, just watched him carefully. Another stroke, and another, and the fourth one elicited a gasp. By the sixth strike, carefully layered across the first purpling welt, there was a grunt from the helpless man and he could see by the surprise on his face that the pain was starting the relentless seep up through his legs, intensifying beyond expectation or reason. The next few hits were accompanied by soft grunts and curse the man, he was swallowing down his pain more stoically than anyone he had ever known.

He swung again but missed, feeling the tiny bones in the toes crack under the rod and at last, at last it drew the first real scream from Aramis. Rochefort's blood thrilled at the sound. Driven on with renewed vigour, he lost himself in his task, the screams a rousing melody to the strikes of wood on flesh, a rhythm only he could predict, his own sweat on his brow, the sweet burn of muscle in his arm, the recoil shuddering through his limb and bursting into his heart.

The body before him contorting weakly, a fish on a line, a dying rabbit in a snare, trying mindlessly to retreat from the pain, strikes carrying racing fire through his stromata, flesh striped purple and haemorrhaging under the skin, now, finally, a split under the flash of wood, and another, the integuments of his feet parting under the violence.

He stopped. Panting, his arm burning with exertion and ears ringing with lust and blood and joy, he finally felt satiation. His long plan and longer pain, and at last he felt alive. He looked to find Margeurite, to share his joy with her, only to hear her footsteps running from him, from this room, wailing piteously through the stone corridors. He drew his knife, slashed the bloodied ropes, uncaring that he nicked skin and let the tortured limbs fall to the stone below, then knelt to cradle his captives cheek.

Aramis cringed from him like a beaten dog, tears in his eyes, high moans shivering the frigid air, his body rippling with the pain that coursed his nerves still, skin confused under the onslaught and interpreting every touch as pain.

"Five years, they left me," he whispered. "I was strong. I was loyal. And they left me at the mercy of the Spanish. They took so much from me. And when I was released, I found you. You, with Spanish blood and fickle French honour, and you took my queen from me. The one thing the Spanish could not take from me and they still managed it after all, because of you."

He paused to swallow, to reign in his pain.

"I shall have my revenge. You are my revenge. You think you have suffered today? Tomorrow is your last dawn. You will be taken from here to be broken on the wheel of Saint Catherine. They will smash your limbs with iron, your bones will splinter and pierce your skin. The marrow in your thighs will leak into the sunlight and they will braid your ruined body through the spokes of the wheel. And you will lie there, alive and rotting under the sky before all the eyes of Paris, rats and ravens feasting on your flesh until God sees fit to dispose of you."

He released him then, choking on horror at his fate, and left him to the care of the prison guards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, the description of breaking on the wheel is amalgamated from 17th century court records and a couple of witness descriptions.
> 
> Does anybody have anything really nice and fluffy to read in order to wash my head clean of my own writing?


	6. Dawn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't ever say I never gave you anything, you bloodthirsty bunch!

She came to them in the moonlight, his black-haired wife, all his hopes and fears and joy and pain residing in her silver skin. Aramis was not with her. She was speaking before the question could be asked.

"He lives still, but he cannot walk and I cannot carry him."

"What do mean he cannot walk?" His own voice was ice, and it laved over the angry rumble from Porthos.

Her lip curled in distaste, whether at him or in memory he could not tell.

"Did you ever think Rochefort would be satisfied by a public execution? The man is mad with bloodlust."

"If he's hurt him I'm gonna-"

She cut across Porthos' threats. "He is hurt. And he is out of time. He is to be taken at dawn to the wheel of Catherine."

"Dawn is in a few hours," he said calmly. Very, very calmly. It didn't disguise the pained moan from d'Artagnan. 

"And we are a few hours from Paris. We are wasting time discussing it. I need your strength," she said to Porthos. The big man nodded, their past troubles with Athos' wife immaterial. She would help return their stolen brother, nothing else could ever matter.

She pressed her silken body to her husband, but it wasn't a seduction.

Her voice too low for any but he to hear. "We may be too late," she whispered for his ears alone. Those words carried his brother's death.

"The Wheel is an awful death," he said, grief strangling his voice. "It can take days to die. If we can't save him..." he could not finish, the words felt like prophecy.

"Then we must kill him," she finished, simply.

He nodded, he felt like Judas but God help him he nodded "We cannot be late." He didn't bother to hide his fear.

"How are we to succeed?" Constance's voice, trembling but strong. "After you snatched me from the executioners block Rochefort will be doubly on his guard."

"I have but one idea," he began carefully, before spitting. "And it is useless. We have not the numbers nor the time." Defeat tasted like ashes on his tongue.

She audibly smirked then, that she-devil in an angels skin and he turned on her snarling. She turned into his fury, fearless. "The plan has already started."

He felt surprise painted ridiculous across his face and was glad for the darkness. Either God was smiling on them for once or she truly was a sorceress, to know his every thought before even he did. He crushed her to him in a fierce kiss and tasted blood as her teeth broke his lip in equal passion.

"Will it work?" his young protégé asked, impatient.

"We are probably all going to die." He turned, remounting his horse.

"To Paris!" he cried, the others echoing him.

*************************************************************************************

They could have left him curled and cold on the damp stone, fettered and beaten, for the rest of the day and the long night before his execution.

They didn't. They had hoisted him to his blasted feet and tightened the rope to his chains. He could endure standing, or sink to his knees and wrench his arms. His body was at the end of its endurance. His arms were useless meat, the chains part of him now, embedded in his skin, the strings to his broken marionette. His body was wracked with tremors, thin shirt and braes no protection from the winter chill, his flesh the same temperature as his stone tomb.

One eye swollen nearly shut, blood from his temple rusting together the lashes of the other, he could just make out the dark marks of his own bloody footprints chequering the flagstones before him, illustrating the battle between the pain of his shoulders and the searing of his feet before exhaustion chose the outcome of the fight and tumbled him to his knees anyway. He longed for oblivion but his pain forced him to stay awake, thighs burning as he forced his body to kneel sharply upright.

He had tried to regain his feet but had only fallen, repeatedly, and drawn the guards laughter with his screams, so now he knelt, his legs locked trembling beneath him, but it had been hours and they had begun to fail. When they did his arms would take the strain, wrenched upwards and with nothing to hold the bones together would separate, again, so, choking on agony he would force his legs out of their exhausted cramping to hold him up once more. But the time they could support him shortened in waves, his body rocking between the two agonies, oscillating between one hell and another and unable to find a balance.

Hours later, his body utterly spent, his legs would not respond and his world contracted to the inescapable burning across his shoulders and the tendrils that snaked down and wrapped his lungs. The air was thick and hard to draw, and dimly he recognised that with his air so restricted he may not survive until tomorrow, tomorrow when they would kill him, and he wondered why he still fought, why he did not let himself suffocate and thus grant himself a kinder death.

He tried to shield his heart with the memories of his brothers, but found he could not recall their faces. He may have wept then, except his blood was thick and empty from days of no sustenance, two without water, longer without food, and would not spare the water for tears.

He tried to galvanise his soul with prayers learned at the lap of his mother but the constant pain in his mouth sparked to new agonies when he tried to speak, and he tasted iron and salt and he remembered dimly that he should not speak.

There were no prayers, no memories, no past and no future, only now, only him and his pain, alone in the circle of light from the torch, the only thing against him and the blackness, the only sign of Gods love.

Then it flickered and went out.

He sobbed then, for of course he had been found unworthy by the Almighty, wretched sinner that he was though he could not remember his sins at this time. Alone with his pain, even God had forsaken him, and the torment in his flesh the only sign that he wasn't dead already, or did it confirm his death? For the floor was ice below him and his body fire above and maybe they had killed him, his soul rejected from his God and residing now in hell.

Ghosts came out of the darkness then, some to save him, some to kill him, and Marsac's ghost with snow in his beard and black feathers in his hair to sit by him and weep the tears he could not, his touch was ice.

Hours later, they came for him. The torch they brought into his black cell blinded him and he knew they were real because he couldn't see them like he could the ghosts. He faintly remembered that the next time he saw light would be the herald of his death, the day of his execution. He was broken already, he wasn't sure they needed to break him on the wheel. He didn't want to die but he had not the strength to live.

Hands raised his face, but he couldn't see in the searing light, thumbs gentle over his the ridge of his eye, but Rochfort was always at his most gentle before hurting him the worst. He flinched as the bridle was jolted, choked as it briefly hit the back of his throat. He wanted to pull away, he couldn't bear to be touched, but he was still helplessly pinioned in his bonds. Words were being exchanged above him but he couldn't make sense of them, and then the chains fell away.

He crumpled as he was freed, the strings to his broken puppet cut, and there were arms around him, he was cradled against someone's chest, his nose filling with the scent of leather and sweat and gunpowder. Some memory sparked but skittered away before he could find it. It didn't matter, he supposed, he would be dead soon. Someone was tugging at the back of the gag, it tightened inside him and his mouth flared painfully, no strength left to stifle the whimper it brought, a voice spat something angrily and he cringed.

He was lifted to his feet, did they expect him to walk to his death after what they had done to him? He started laughing at that, laughing as he took a pace, the sound ghoulish and mad and it turned to screams soon enough as the bones of his feet ground together in a way they were never meant to. The elevation sent his head spinning anyway and he remembered no more as his body folded again, falling, falling, falling down to hell.

*************************************************************************************************

The floor was wooden and shifting and the world suffused with light, but crusted blood and swollen flesh robbed him of his sight. Carted to his death, or perhaps already placed on the wheel and he was denied his last sight of Gods creation. Someone had arranged his arms on the wooden slats in front of him, (not yet the wheel) curled up by his face, and whilst one lay unresponsive, the left spasmed weakly and he used it to paw at the metal in his mouth.

His fingers wouldn't move, wouldn't bend, but he was desperate, the iron was becoming part of him, flesh and rust forming some awful union inside him and the thought set a screaming fear in his mind, so he forced his damaged limb to batter at his face, to push at the device, but all it did was twist inside him.

Someone nearby was whining, he supposed it must have been him, but he couldn't stop despite the pain, he had to dislodge it before it soldered itself to the inside of his mouth, he could feel the heat of it as it tried, and he couldn't stop it and he couldn't stop trying.

A hand descended, wrapped around his, voices at and around him but they were stopping him and it was hurting and he had to get it out. He fought with all his strength, but there wasn't any strength left, and the voice became more urgent, the hands on him became firmer and he couldn't bear to be touched, he couldn't take any more pain, he was pain made flesh, hands were lifting him and he tried to tell them he would do anything if they would only stop touching him but he had forgotten that he must not speak.

He laughed at forgetting such a thing but it came out a broken sob. Someone was cursing and his terror amplified, he couldn't get enough air, the device was killing him, someone was screaming and then something tightened against his throat, everything hurt, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't _breathe_ , he whited out in terror and the world fell away, his soul sent screaming into the black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *peeks head out to view commenters*  
> So, erm....verdict?  
> *ducks rotten fruit and occasional knife thrown*
> 
> Ok, seriously, stick with the story though...


	7. Fury

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: Purple Prose. So much purple.

"This plan of yours," began Porthos, a low rumble over the hoofbeats.

"The Musketeer regiment," Athos started to reply.

"The Trojan war," Milady said at the same time, then she gave a silver laugh."Without Athos and Treville to curb their rowdy behaviour, they have been brawling and drunk. The more truculent are cooling their heels in prison. A few more by now, I imagine, once I met with them."

The silence was palpable, powerful, and ripe with respect. Athos felt warm with a rush of pride.

"Rochefort has them right where they are needed!" d'Artagnan breathed, hope kindling in his voice.

"We break in, free the first cells, they will release the rest and we can locate Aramis. They are not held for anything corporal, and Aramis is well loved by all the regiment." It was the truth, down to the bones, and Athos held their skeletal plan like a talisman. So much to go wrong, and so little to stop it, he could only look forwards. They would probably be slain before even gaining entry to the prison. But he would never say as much.

"It's not enough." d'Artagnan again, and Athos would have punched him if he could reach, of course it wasn't enough but Aramis was out of time and they were out of options. He must have snarled, because d'Artagnan held up a hand to him placatingly.

"We may gain the prison easily enough but leaving it so burdened will be another tale. Even if half the Musketeer regiment are imprisoned, Rochefort will have enough Red Guard nearby to overwhelm us. He will be expecting something. We need to secure the exit, and if Rochefort has had Aramis moved? We have to secure the route to...the route he'll be taken."

The boy couldn't say 'execution' and Athos understood. Another surge of pride pushed through him and though he thought he could see the turns his protégés agile mind had taken he still asked "What do you propose?" His answer was a grin in his dark face, white and fierce.

"Leave that to me. Just get him out."

The moon was a silver scar, hung low in the sky. The stars were scattered teeth or chips of bone and the first of the new day was bruising the horizon as they parted ways and Athos cast aside the thought that it was a sign.

His wife's wiles got them through the gate. The man just saw beauty in the fading night and died for it. Athos wondered if he would always be as helpless around her. In the guard room Porthos let free his awesome rage and broke heads upon the stone walls and Milady relieved them of their keys.

The first passages of the prison was lined with open-faced cells barred with iron grates, and held faces they knew. They were all angry, young and quarrelsome, and they were all ready to aid them. Porthos tossed them a set of keys whilst Athos briefed them of their plan, and a few nodded respectfully towards Milady, and Athos wondered if anything was possible in this strange new world he's found himself in before shaking free of such thoughts and leading down the smokey-torched passages, deeper into the prison.

Only one door was guarded, and at last they had found him. Porthos made short and silent work of the unprepared man and Milady twisted the key in the lock and let him pass.

Athos felt pieces of his soul tear loose at the vision of horror before him. He pressed a hand without looking to Porthos' broad chest, a warning, or to spare him for but a moment, or to borrow strength from his most stalwart comrade for himself, or to ground them both - any and all.

A questioning rumble "Is he alive?" under his fingertips and he swallowed against the fury that reared feral in his throat and he stepped forward into hell, pulling Porthos with him.

Aramis was a broken bird in white and scarlet, wings outstretched above and behind him tipped with claws, black head hung low.

"What's wrong with his hands?" They shared a thrill of horror. Of course Porthos asked. Porthos who had won small fortunes gambling on the surety of those hands in shooting competitions, who had placed his love and life and laughter in those clever fingers in wine and fruit soaked evenings and battlefield surgery, perhaps more often than Athos. It was his wife that answered from her stance at the doorway.

"The nerves have been damaged. Get him down now."

'Now' meaning 'it might be too late' and 'he may never use his hands again' and Athos was grateful she had not said as such out loud. She pressed the keys to Porthos' hands.

A ripple of awareness passed through his fallen brother as the torchlight touched him but he was too weak to raise up, his proud head bowed low and body folded, kneeling, surrendered, yet suspended from his arms at an impossible angle, unable to fall, unable to rise.

The chill flagstones around him scattered over with smudged footprints, the marks red and black in the torchlight, a bloody dance. Porthos staggered against him and he knew he had seen it too.

He knelt and took Aramis' face with infinite gentleness, confused when his fingers closed over metal, then shaking as rage rose snapping as comprehension dawned, here his brother, muzzled like a dangerous beast, enforced silence a singularly personal punishment for Aramis, a man of song and soft prose, wit and words, poetry and prayer and to take that away in his darkest hours? The cruel device a precision blow against his humanity, reduced to wordless screams like a base animal and denied even to beg for mercy.

They had come for their stolen brother, but here was a vision in blood and iron. He was not recognisable as his dashing comrade, and Athos was sure he didn't recognise them with one eye swollen near shut and the other so thick with drying blood the lashes could not part.

"My brother, what have they done to you?" He eased the pads of his thumbs over that beaten brow, mindful of the split in his temple, and was sure his heart broke when Aramis flinched. He tugged briefly at the awful gag but Aramis choked and twisted weakly.

"Nearly there," Porthos croaked. "Brace him." The big mans voice was improbably calm.

"Rochefort will suffer for this," he responded.

"Later," was the reply, a brittle calm poured over terrible grief. Together, they lowered Aramis' twisted arms back through their natural rotation, fearful of what damage might be there. He collapsed against Athos, who caught him tenderly, cradling him to his breast as if he could ease the tremors in that freezing flesh, body as cold as the stone they knelt on.

Porthos' scarred hand eased gently into those dark curls, matted now with blood, and snagged the back of the iron band, seeking the lock. Aramis keened at the movement, a broken whimper, and Athos saw tears glisten in Porthos eyes.

"Bastard!" he swore. "There's no key for this. And the light is poor." He was fumbling for his lock picks anyway.

"We don't have time." His wife at the doorway still, voice clear and sharp, a pistol in each hand for their defence.

"Are you so heartless?" Porthos snapped at her.

"If you'd rather free his voice than save his life, by all means, but I'll not die with you." Her stance was changing, as if to leave them.

Her voice gentled "It's been there over a day. An hour more won't make a difference. Let us leave, give him a chance at life."

She was right, they both knew it, there was shouting in the halls, but his heart remonstrated at knowingly letting his brother suffer on, and he swore viciously. And regretted it instantly as Aramis cringed helplessly in his arms.

"She's not wrong. We must leave. Help me get him up." Together they raised him to his bloody feet, and were sickened by the sound he made, a bitter parody of laughter stretched tight and thin over agony before he staggered a pace and the agony broke through and he fell senseless against them.

The formidable strength of Porthos saved them, though their brother was a man grown he lifted him as if he were a sickly child, great hands fisted in his own doublet to brace the precious burden in his arms.

Athos caught his brothers bloodied head as it lolled senseless back and positioned it carefully against Porthos' shoulder, hateful metal gleaming in the torchlight where there had been joyous smile.

His wife still in the doorway, impatience sparked off her skin, her scant humanity stretched thin (he did that to her) he recognised, another guilty blow. He and Anne, husband and wife, coursed the way, senses primed and keen, them against the enmity their stone surrounding symbolised, and something feral sang glorious in his veins at his own wife that he had killed was standing firm and fierce to defend his family.

Porthos, faithful Porthos, followed them, the vengeance in his skin suppressed, entrusted to he and the devil in his wife, and then at last, the resistance he should have feared all along. Whatever fearsome rage his brother had was carefully gentled to tend their fallen comrade, and Athos would never mention the gleaming tears that tracked into Porthos' beard.

Opposition, at last, and rationally he feared it, feared that they would not succeed in their rescue but the primal rage he held barely tethered revelled in it, gloried in the opportunity to spill the blood of those who had drawn his brothers. A pistol reported and another, two enemies lay dying for their duty and his wife was black hair and silver dirk beside him, ferocious and so alive.

Porthos behind him laid their brother down, standing tall over him, and Athos had never seen a man look so much like a bear guarding its den, ruination promised in his voice and in his eyes. Like wolves they fought, he and his deadly wife, quick and silent with steel teeth.

Porthos was fighting three but they were outnumbered and men slipped past him and his fearsome wife, and a balding brute had slipped under Porthos to grip Aramis by the hair to drag him out from their protection.

A mistake on his part.

There was a roar behind them and the tide turned, the disgraced company of musketeers sprung from their prisons had arrived and turned the fight. Porthos took down his opponents one after the other and closed his hands over man who had dared touch Aramis. Porthos lifted him, lifted him high then smashing him down with a roar across his bended knee, spine snapping at the impact. A cheer rang from the throats of their comrades, Porthos smile was white and awful as he reclaimed his brothers senseless form, as Milady's steel fangs ripped out the throat of their last foe.

They tumbled out into the first light of dawn as it haemorrhaged against the Parisian sky.

Men were waiting for them, but not foes. Men from the garrison, and they had a dappled pony waiting with a cart. Porthos did not hesitate, laying Aramis down so carefully on the wooden slats and hoisting himself in to crouch low and dangerous over his injured friend.

Athos and his wife mounted their horses and he took the pony's reins, they turned and they were leaving, leaving, they had made it this far against all expectations but aligned with every desperate hope and he couldn't quite believe how their luck had held, although his mind now turned ahead to the difficulties of traversing the city unmolested.

"All for one," he found himself saying, reverently, quietly, but some heard him and cried back "And one for all!"

It wasn't long before the Red Guard tried to stop them. They had only made it a few streets when cries to halt came from behind them. Athos turned in his saddle, sighting down his pistol when suddenly a strangely early tavern brawl spilled out into the streets between them and their pursuers. Men in commoners clothes yet displaying skill in combat blocked the path, posturing and shouting at each other, colliding into each other and staggering on the rebound into their red-garbed foe.

A delighted laugh from Porthos, d'Artagnan's plan sprung perfectly and they made their escape.

Their smiles burned away though, at the sound Aramis made. He was stirring weakly, one arm motionless, the other pushing hopelessly against the iron band around his face, and oh God the noise he made would haunt Athos through his dreams.

"Aramis, hey, hey, you're safe. We got you out." Porthos voice was low and gentle but grief was cresting through its waves. Aramis was too far gone to understand, pawing clumsily at the device, his fingers clawing weakly with no dexterity, a desperate whine chasing the fresh blood from his mouth.

"Stop him, Porthos," he heard himself bark, watching helplessly from his horse, even as the big mans hand closed gently over Aramis' torn knuckles, a flush of pride that he had fought back as long as he were able.

"Please be calm, Aramis. We can't stop yet and we can't get it off until we stop. Please, just wait."

The touch ignited a new desperation in their stricken friend, he fought Porthos weakly, his strength all burned up long before yet he still tried to twist away, their clever brother mindless with fear, a thin and desperate whimper threading the air and he had to dash tears from his eyes to scan for enemies.

Porthos did what he could, lifting him gently but Aramis had been bound for too long and he was choking with terror, bloody screams tearing their hearts to ribbons and people were staring, pointing, and Athos knew they were discovered and he would NOT let the damage Rochefort had done to them be their undoing at this stage of the rescue.

He spurred his horse and dragged on the pony's reins and a ruckus erupted behind them, a musket ball tore through his hat but there was a clash of swords and _how_ many traps had their cunning Gascon laid?

Aramis' screams had changed, airless choking now, and Athos saw that Porthos had enfolded him in his great arms, his forearm a band against their brothers throat, a living noose, Aramis flailed helplessly, leaving trails of blood, his own body refusing to help him tear away the arm strangling him, and Porthos had wrestled stronger children.

It seemed like hours but it could have been no more than a minute before Aramis at last stilled, and Porthos took his arm from his throat as if it burned, checked him for breath, then carefully enfolded him again, pressed a kiss to that stricken brow, and bent over him weeping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See, I do deliver on promises! I feel I've satiated the whump!crowd and now I'm giving the comfort!crowd what they came for. I hope, anyway.


	8. Release

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, folks. This chapter just Would. Not. End.
> 
> Thanks to SuePokorny for the final push, being an awesome Beta and for making sure my research kept to the sidelines and amplified authenticity rather than becoming an information-bomb.
> 
> A bit of comfort at last? Well, the Motherload of comfort and nurture. Happy?
> 
> Also, looky see, I updated the tags. And possibly created some for the medieval techniques. AO3 got a torture tag upgrade!

Fires were springing up behind them in the city as they arrived at their safe-house, wherein they were greeted by d'Artagnan.

"The regiment was furious at the sentence and it got a bit out of hand, but we've started riots throughout the main city and a few of us set fire to the Red Guard garrison. They won't have the manpower to come after us now as half the city is fighting!" He was breathless, vibrating with fury and delight, Constance pressed eagerly to his side, gunpowder smudged on her pale cheek.

Athos vaguely heard Treville mention Vargas being tied up in an adjoining room and his wife swept briskly in that direction.

Their smiles died as Porthos bowed through the door, Aramis bloody and insensate in his arms.

"The hell did they do to him?" d'Artagnan hissed fiercely.

Constance voice wavered on, "What IS that on his face?"

Athos helped to lay him down on the sheepskin by the fire, the chill of the dungeons he'd been left to freeze in still set deep in his shaking flesh despite the cloak Porthos had wrapped him in sometime during their desperate flight. Treville swept the table clear of paper and armaments part in helpless rage, part clearing space for the medical supplies they would need. Athos wrapped pale fingers around a torn wrist, and he pushed aside his shrieking guilt for later - everything must wait until Aramis was whole again. The pulse was thin and unsteady and Athos frowned.

Porthos was making his own count with a hand pressed over Aramis' heart, and if it also doubled to reassure him that his brother lived, none would mention it. The former thief groped one-handedly for his lock-picks - time at last; no enemies to guard against, no moving cart nor pistols to hold ready. Aramis was safe and they could asses the awful vengeance Rochefort had wrought on their reckless brother.

"He may waken whilst we do this, and he may not know where he is nor understand anything other than he is being hurt again," Athos found himself explaining.

“We need that off his face, I'll not have him muzzled a moment longer!" Porthos said back, and nobody had ever seen him so calm, so deadly calm.

"I agree," he placated "but we don't know what damage it hides nor how long it's been in and this is Aramis, he doesn't know how not to fight."

Athos pinched at the skin on Aramis’ forearm and pulled upwards before letting go. It slowly righted itself, too slowly, the imprint of fingers clear.

"As I suspected, he has been without water for too long. He may be in a delirium, he will not recognise friend from foe, and we must be prepared to stop him from hurting himself."

“I'll not do that again, Athos, I can't do that again! Do not ask that of me." The break in Porthos heart was audible in his voice. There was a questioning trill from Constance and Porthos nearly turned on her, but directed his glare to the wall instead as he answered.

"I strangled him, alright? He was hurting and afraid and I strangled him to keep him quiet so we could make our escape."

“You also saved him from harming himself further, Porthos. Do not forget that."

"This isn't helping him now. What do you need me to do?" d'Artagnan offered, easing the tension, pulling Porthos back from the awful grief before it could consume him.

"I think we should act now. There's too much blood in his eyes for him to see. You can free his sight whilst Porthos works the lock. He must be kept absolutely still. We cannot let him fight whilst we try to get it off. Let's hope he stays asleep for this. The muzzle first. We will need a tea for the pain, too, and clean water and cloth, his medical kit..." Athos rattled off his demands quietly.

They all sprang to do his bidding. D'Artagnan was already at Aramis’ face with a damp cloth, easing the dried blood from his eyes and holding a wad of cool linen to the swelling. Their captain gently eased a folded towel under Aramis’ head to cushion it.

Together they manoeuvred him onto his left side, and d'Artagnan threaded his wiry fingers through dark curls, stiff with blood and grime, mindful of the iron band, seemingly unable to look away from the blood both tacky and drying in flakes that threatened to close the breathing hole even as the cloth stained red as he washed his eyes. Constance had set water on the fire, and Treville crooked his soldier’s legs and placed gentle pressure there. Athos himself took his brothers arms, still unsure of what damage had been done to them, placed one hand at the crook of the elbow of the uppermost limb and the other gentle at the blade of the shoulder, where even unconscious the muscles were corded and tight.

They were barely in position when Porthos began, refusing to wait a moment longer. The lock was stiff, blood or rust obscuring the way, but Porthos was practised and determined, not letting desperation shake his fingers.

And Aramis came to with a heave, a sound halfway between a snarl and a yelp. Curse the man - he never made things easy for himself. Or them. As one they firmed their grip, immobilising him despite the fear that loaned strength he didn't have to his limbs, the shaking through his starved frame. Not a one of them could blame him, waking up in pain and held down by people he couldn't see, mind fraying from the body's lack of sustenance.

"Let him go. Everyone." Porthos voice was a whip-crack.

"We have to get it off."

"We have a choice of how to do it and I'll not set more fear in him."

Aramis was shaking against their grip, fear joined the cold in his flesh, and Athos nodded.

They released him and he curled in on himself as much as he was able, one arm lying useless across him and the other at his mouth again. Athos was afraid of what damage there was taking mindless precedence over everything else. He gave a muffled cry at Porthos' hands on him, but the warm cloth upon his eyes seemed to still him. Hands one could expect, warmth was not something you would receive amongst enemies.

"Brother, open your eyes. You have to look at me Aramis. You have to know you are safe."

And somehow, Porthos must have reached him, for he was rewarded, lashes parting, freed of blood, and Aramis' eyes found his. His gaze was aching and confused, but it locked to Porthos and the tension drained from him, ragged breath stilled. A questioning trill rose in his throat and betrayal eddied into the hurt in his eyes, even as he haltingly clawed at his face again. Porthos wrapped his fingers gently around his hand to still him.

"I'm trying," he murmured. "You're not making it easy for me."

Understanding entered Aramis’ eyes and he shivered.

"I'm going to try again. It will hurt you. Can you hold still?"

He gave a huff that slid part-way into pleading trill, and Porthos knew he would never see desperation like it again.

They lifted him until he was half-reclining against Athos, a low moan as they jarred hidden injuries, and though his trembling increased at their touch he did not try to pull away, eyes screwed tight against the world, breathing too fast. Athos held his head perfectly still, his temple pressed against Aramis', whispering a prayer to soothe him. He was not devout but had heard Aramis speak it often enough.

There was a quiet snick and the lock sprang open. Porthos opened wide the joints of the band and, despite the urge for haste, parted his brother’s jaw himself, and eased the metal gently from between Aramis' teeth. Treville swore and Constance hid her face against d'Artagnans shoulder. Athos felt his stomach heave as the sight of the spiked bar, as long as the first fingers on his hand and thick as three around, slick with his friends blood, was revealed.

Aramis cried out as the source of his pain was released from his injured flesh, shaking still, eyes squeezed shut. Porthos hurled the instrument of agony from him as if it burned him before shouldering d'Artagnan aside to brush the backs of his fingers against Aramis cheek.

He thumbed over the strained muscles at the hinge of his jaw, and prodded gently at the bone to check it for wholeness. He startled as fingers weakly brushed his sleeve. Aramis was reaching out to him as much as his damaged body was able, throat working as he tried to find his voice, a huff as he gave up and a feeble nod against the big man’s palm. Porthos laced his fingers through his brother’s, concerned at the weakness there. His lips were parched and tore as he gave a weak smile, and Porthos let his tears spill silver down his cheeks.

Athos gave them a moment before signalling to swap with Porthos. "

"Let's get some fluids in him whilst he's still lucid," he commanded. He eased Aramis up and nudged an earthen tankard against bloody lips, but the water must have ignited a hellfire in the wounds of his mouth and he spat it out, dribbling red and carrying with it pieces of broken teeth to set white against his dark beard.

Athos shoved the cup at d'Artagnan and staggered back a pace, wary of keeping the rage that strained in his skin too close to that wounded soul.

Aramis’ eyes chased the water desperately, and they set it to his lips once more. He drained it and failed to hold back a whimper as it emptied, but Constance replaced it with a warm tea of meadowsweet and valerian, thick with honey.

"Keep giving him water and honey, but slowly. Until he will take no more. He has been ill-used and the body will take time to right itself. Constance, wash water and soft bandages. Let's see why his feet are bleeding." Treville was already at his soldier’s feet, palpating the swellings as gently as he knew how, and ignored the hiss of pain.

As the water turned red and the grime from prison was rinsed from him, the marks of the beating were clear; blood settled black under the skin near uniformly, and seeping crimson where it was split from the violence. Some toes were obviously broken, and fractures in the bones deep in the arch of the feet could be but guessed at.

His feet were bloody pulp under the skin, soft and toneless as rotten fruit.

"Do we need to release the pressure?" D'Artagnan asked.

"Not unless you mean to kill him from infection. He'll not walk for a while with the pain, but he will heal. The British are fond of this method to discipline unruly soldiers - it refers pain to every limb, and afterwards even the kindest touch will hurt. Has that passed, Aramis?"

Dark eyes opened wearily, he was starting to drift to sleep as the cold released his body, and he nodded.

"The British do this to their soldiers? That doesn't seem....efficient..."

"Never this bad. A dozen strikes at most. This was torture, not discipline. I've heard tell of men die of it, their hearts stopped by the pain."

"A kinder death than the Wheel." The awful rasp was from Aramis, the sound like sand poured over glass. Blood chased thin from his lips, and if his lax fingers tightened over Porthos' hand, none would comment. Athos was stunned at how tenacious he was, lucid still, though barely conscious.

A silence fell at that, their fate had turned on an angel’s breath and could turn again as quickly. The knowledge ached. In that moment Aramis slipped into sleep, shivering less now from the warm press of bodies and the heat kicked out by the fireplace.

"You said he will heal. Nothing permanent?"

Treville's mouth twisted. "Define permanent. Hush, I know what you mean. In a year? If he heals well? He will be cautious on his feet, and he will not think kindly of walking great distances, but you would have to know what was done to see it. For now, with a few of weeks rest he will walk again."

"No long missions then? He won’t be happy about that." The boy was thinking out loud and Athos was amazed at his naïveté.

He laid a hand on d'Artagnan's arm but Treville interrupted.

"We don't know anything yet, Athos," he cautioned, but his voice was bleak.

"What? You suspect something?" d'Artagnan, tactless as ever.

"He's not moved his right arm since we found him, and his left only a little. There is no strength in them."

"What did Rochefort do?"

"I cannot be sure, but he was kneeling in strappado, I know not for how long, but he did not know us when we came for him and fought us every moment he could." Athos answered, sharing a black look with his captain, his heart both twisting in grief and swelling in pride.

"He would not have had a choice with those feet. Mother of God! We are soldiers. We are used to pain but that is the cruelty of the Pit!" Treville visibly silenced himself after that, then clipped out, "d'Artagnan, salve and bandage his feet, then you can make sure that Athos’ wife hasn’t damaged our guest. And Constance? We will need more bandages, more liniment, more...everything.”

She left silently, and Athos thought it was perhaps to let her or Aramis preserve some dignity that Treville had sent her away as they cut the dirty braes from him. There was a bone deep bruise over the jut of his hip, but otherwise his legs were unscathed and they laid a blanket over him.

They moved upwards, wordlessly cutting the linen shirt from him, stiff with blood and grime, and Athos wished he had no capacity for shock left when the abuse Aramis had suffered was laid bare before them.

His chest and flank and abdomen were a canvass, deep bruises in constellations across his skin, marks the shape of boots and fists told the story well enough. Rochefort’s vengeance for a pain he never was dealt. Denied what he wanted and unstable already, his impotent lust sated only by pain, and Aramis had been defenceless.

And alone.

Athos bit down on the inside of his cheek, tasting iron, and steered his mind back to their task. Palpating the chest revealed no broken ribs, mercifully, but the junction of the ribs and sternum was lax, the joinings subluxed, and the muscles that stretched across his chest were painfully tight, rebelliously contracted from being overstretched and torn.

The shoulders were whole at first glance but there was no question of damage. Every muscle that connected to them was locked in spasm, so tightly corded the fibres of his flesh were visible through the skin, and so tender that even in sleep he made low sounds of pain at their touch.

He was startled awake with a gasp when Treville rotated his motionless right arm, and when he moved to the left limb, Aramis hissed and weakly tried to pull out of his grip, eyes closed tight and no way to know if he still recognised them.

"The bones are in place now but....Aramis, were you dropped?"

Silence, his eyes remained closed, and Athos hoped he had drifted to sleep. But then his brow furrowed, he gave a brief nod and turned his head away from them, deeper into Porthos' steadfast arms. They shared a look, the three of them.

"There's no way to measure the damage," Treville sighed.

"He may never use that arm again." Athos' own voice sounded cruel, words blunt, but there was no sense hiding though he cringed to say them.

"Do not speak of that. Let's get him through today." Porthos' voice was fierce and quiet, Aramis asleep again between them. God would not change reality through the force of denial, but Athos knew that Porthos would try.

"One or both of the joints have dislocated. There is little we can do other than stabilise them and pray God wills him to heal. We will know more when he is awake."

His right hand was bruised and misshapen, two fingers crooked and though they needed setting, it was decided to bandage them for now and let him rest, the idea of inflicting more pain on him whilst his lucidity was so tenuous just too much to bear. They wrapped his wrists where the rough irons had cut them, deep bruising that encircled them a vivid illustration of his torture, and spread salve on his torn knuckles.

"He will have marked them, those that did this," Athos remarked softly as he worked.

"Of course he will. He's Aramis. He went down swinging." Porthos' voice was thick and rich, Athos felt fond memories drawn tight in the air between them of Aramis, dark and fierce and glorious, fighting beside them for king and country, for brotherhood and for life.

"If we survive the next few days, we will find them," he vowed, drawing the ice resolutely over his guilt and grief.

Porthos met his eyes and grinned, all teeth and no humour, a predator’s smile that promised absolute hell.

The split to his temple was too swollen to stitch but might require them to once fluid receded from the tissue. d’Artagnan had already rinsed the rope fibres from the wounds that circled his ankles, tight cord had bitten deep where he had fought to escape his torture, salved and wrapped them. At last, Aramis mouth was the only task before them, and they ascertained his unconsciousness before even daring touch him there. He had not stirred under their administrations for a while, and his body was still, finally free of the cold of his captivity. Athos slipped two fingers between chapped lips and nearly wept.

His mouth was a red ruin, and Athos was sure that if you could look at his own heart it would look the same. The brutal iron bridle had torn gouges into the soft tissue of his mouth, all the way to the curve of his throat, white glimpses of bone in the deeper wounds in the ridged palette. The tongue was part-flayed, muscle shredded, flesh sliced deeply in several places, iron forced through the flesh where brutal blows had impacted his face. Three teeth towards the back were smashed and shards broken from several others.

“No wonder he was fighting it. That must hurt like Hell even now. I’ll warrant the pain does not keep him awake for the moment from sheer exhaustion, but that will change before the day is out. To have spines pressed into those open wounds-” Porthos choked off, his valence of calm translucent and fragile.

“We will make Rochefort suffer for this, although a hundred deaths could not settle the score!”

"There is nothing to be done here. The mouth cannot be stitched and for now, he needs rest. The only treatment is to keep it from festering with salt or a propolis paste.”

“For the love of God, Athos, we will use the propolis!”

Constance had heard and brought it to them, thinned with warm water from the pot and they applied a scant covering to the wounds inside his mouth, the scent of burning amber and pine chasing away the smell of dirt and sweat and blood.

They rubbed goosefat where the bridle had split the corners of his mouth and where lack of water had cracked his lips but it was a pathetic attempt at repair. They could do nothing to address the deeper wounds, the ruin of his mouth, the ruin of his body, and God only knew what had been done to his spirit.

Athos stumbled from the room retching.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turning out to have more plot than I intended. What fun!
> 
> As ever, medical and historical accuracy has been strived for. Please let me know if something sticks out as being wrong though.


	9. Damocles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I am fully aware this chapter is me retroactively fixing things I felt were mishandled or misrepresented in the show. So there.

It was too much. He had seen men brought low by lesser injuries, their spirit changed when their bodies became not their own to command, or from terrible pain. Shadows always lingered in the heart, the shadows could consume them and the thought of Aramis, bright Aramis, fierce and joyful Aramis, devoured by the darkness Rochefort had set in his soul - it was too much. 

Already, he realised he grieved the loss of Aramis and it felt like a betrayal to mourn so prematurely, but he had been facing his brothers execution for near a week and the loss of Thomas had nearly killed him. He wasn't sure he could watch what was left of Aramis fade away. 

He was a very different creature to the Compte de la Fere, to the man he was before Thomas died, before Anne was….not Anne. His suffering had changed him, made him somebody else, and he had not borne the wounds that Aramis had. His were wounds from circumstance, from life, Aramis had been actively and systematically and ruthlessly broken. No man on earth could withstand such torment and remain unchanged.

If he even survived today. What use was it to be so fearful for his brothers spirit when he might die before the day was done from the abuse, the dehydration? And if they had found him early enough and given him nourishment enough, who was to say the wounds would not fester and kill him come dawn? Or the next day?

He was on his knees in the sunlight, light shivering through tears. He would be praying if could remember how. He was crying, openly, like he had not since the night Thomas died and he had lost his wife too. Now he wept for another brother and all they might yet lose.

A steady footfall behind him, a familiar weight settled on his shoulder. Porthos. Some god-like strength must be in that man, to still be standing when Athos had been brought so low. He crossed his arm over to grip fiercely that supportive hand, offering comfort as well as receiving. 

“If he survives, he will be forever changed. It may have been the work of but a day or two but it will take months for him to regain functionality and perchance years for him to be free of weakness and pain. For a soldier to be unmade thus..." 

“We got him out. He will heal.” Porthos rumbled. It cut off his torrent of despair, damming his grief. It was implacable, a will of nature, and you did not argue with nature.

All his fears and doubts rose choking in his throat but he held them back, swallowed them down, he was exhausted and had not to heart to challenge Porthos’ conviction again. He pulled everything under a sheet of ice and let himself be raised to his feet. 

A bowl of hot mutton stew was pressed into his palm and he allowed himself to be steered to a pallet that had been laid out. He strained his head to find Aramis but Porthos shook his head. 

“He is resting now, and so must we.”

He was right. Leagues and leagues they had crossed on this desperate mission and for good or ill it was drawing to a close. They would need all their strength for the next part.

Dutifully he finished the stew though his appetite had failed him. The hour was late morning and none of them had slept. Porthos sat with him a time, eating silently, shoulders brushing companionably, but then rose to leave.

“He should not wake alone. I will sit with him awhile.” There was quiet grief in Porthos’ voice now. Anger would come later but he was still wrapped carefully in his role as protector.  
Despite the sunlight, playing careless and easy on the worn wood floor, Athos was asleep in moments.

When he awoke hours later, dusk was drawing down upon the city. He went to find his wife. As galling as it had been to beg her for help, he knew they would not have survived without her. After his initial bitter rebuffal of her information, he was genuinely surprised at her willingness to aid them, and at the traces of compassion in her. In the exhausted ache of evening, perhaps it was not devilry that sparked hard from her skin, flint on steel, but a damaged soul. Damage he had started. That tattered compassion he had seen in her ran the risk of changing everything, and he laid his ruined heart bare to her.

“Thankyou. We could not have saved him without you.”

“He will live then? I am glad.”

“He will, unless the wounds fester badly. But he is strong. He has to live. We saved him. He may have committed great treason but I could not see him die like that. I just wish he had not done this to himself.”

She laughed at that, thin and mirthless, and he glared at her in confusion.  
“Do you think facts matter to the likes of you and Rochefort? Do you think circumstance affect the narrative of a madman? Do you know his damning evidence, Athos? That crucifix. Where did Aramis get that crucifix?”

“It was a gift. He saved her Majesty, twice in under a week. He shielded her with his body from gunfire during a prison riot first, and within a score of hours threw himself over a bomb at her feet.” He smiled fondly, muscles protesting and unused to the expression.

“And that is it?” Her voice was sharp, challenging and disbelieving.

“That is his evidence.”

“Then he was doomed the moment he saved her. She is a generous queen and rewards those who display such loyalty. Rochefort is unhinged and needed a sacrifice. Innocent or guilty, Aramis was condemned, even had it stopped at simple servitude.”

“So had he not slept with the Queen?”

“She would be dead, murdered to clear the way for a fertile consort. But that aside, he would be condemned anyway, for the sentiment Rochefort placed in such a trinket. His doom was written long ago in a diseased mind.”

Athos needed to sit down. He needed a drink. He had blamed Aramis, he realised. It had been easy to blame him, Aramis was a reckless fool at times. But it was easier, hurt less to blame his brother for what happened than to accept the total powerlessness of the whole situation. The terrible inevitability of Aramis’ terrible fate, and it had been unavoidable, no matter what choices they made. Aramis had been under the Sword of Damocles all these months, and Athos had only just noticed now. He had rarely felt so helpless.

He went to find his comrades. Porthos was in the room adjoined where he had slumbered, dozing in a chair but leveled his pistol in Athos’ direction before his eyes were even open as he stepped through the door.  
Aramis was on a soft pallet beside him, a little behind him, swathed in white and so deeply asleep that for a heartbeat Athos feared him dead, passed over whilst he lay slumbering in the next room. Selfishly, Athos wished he would open his eyes, rouse from his healing sleep to offer him the comfort of proof that he yet lived. And proof of Aramis, that he was still him.

“How is he?”

“Dead to the world. Had to stop myself prodding him awake just to see if he still was in there.”  
Athos grimaced at the echo of his own thoughts.

“I will sit with him for a bit. Get some rest.”

He drank in the sight of him as Porthos rose and stretched. Bare chest rose and fell, muscles too tight still. Dark head washed of grime and gore against pale down pillows, one eye black but the swelling receding, and shades of blue dusted over pale cheekbones.

He staggered back as a sense-memory showed him Aramis twisting cold and streaked crimson with gore in his own hell. He thought he was past those visions, death visions he had called them in the darker nights, he had seen Thomas so often. Was he to relive his failure to protect another brother so often? Was God so unforgiving?

“Athos?”  
Porthos was steering him from the room, into a chair, and he lost sight of Aramis.

“What happened?”  
He felt himself shrug, gesture helplessly at the half-open door.

"This was done for image, all of it. He looks whole but there has been maximum pain caused. He is badly damaged. Rochefort has crippled him. But he was careful about what could be seen. Aramis would have faced down death with a laugh and a smile and it would have been spoken of for years with awe and respect. But if he were dragged through the streets like this? People would have seen a man broken by the knowledge of his fate, a few well-placed whispers of coward and people would not remember Aramis. Only this.”

“That did not come to pass, Athos. You have to stop. You cannot let what might have been destroy you.”

“It may as well have. He may never be whole again! I took him back to the palace. I failed him. I may as well have handed him that death sentence myself. I certainly passed judgement on him. I blamed him, Porthos.” He turned agonised eyes on his friend.

“I blamed him for what happened, even for his arrest. But Rochefort is insane. Innocent or guilty, Aramis would have suffered for what Rochefort could not have. I know that now and did nothing to protect him.”

“You could not have known it was a trap-”

"She told me long before the events started. Milady. My wife. She warned me and offered information that could have prevented all of this. I ignored her. Ignored it. And this is the result. I could have prevented this. I could have protected him!” He paused, swallowed against the guilt, a futile effort. 

“Look at him. LOOK AT HIM!” He raged, the blood on his hands an emblem of his own failure.

"I should have made him run, I should have forced the stubborn fool to leave and save himself." If he didn't rage he would weep and if he wept he might never stop. 

“I should have spoken with the Queen. He would not disobey a direct order from her. Instead I let him walk in there, into a trap, knowing his life was forfeit should Rochefort ever capture him. I let them take him and I let him rot in prison and now he is ruined.” 

He hurled the bottle against the wall, crimson slicked red down the white-washed stone and wasn’t that just God holding a mirror to his failure?

“Athos, stop.”

“We may have sprung him free but it’s of piteous little use now! We were too late!”  
His hands had been clenched over the back of a wooden chair and he longed for violence, for some outlet and he hurled it to crash across the wine-drenched wall, he wanted it to obliterate the screaming symbol of his guilt but it rebounded, the red a wound in the white, gleaming wetly at him, defiant.

"Athos."   
His brothers voice cut across the surface of his grief but it could not penetrate. Porthos, fiery Porthos, who wore his heart for all the world to see, who took things other men were scared of and somehow made him all the more invincible, his shield the things that weakened other men. His steady voice was calm but it carried a note of urgent warning. 

"You must calm yourself, Athos." 

“I HAVE BEEN CALM!”   
He had been calm for weeks, calm in the burden of Aramis secret, calm in their quest to Spain, calm in their storming of the prison, calm in the sight of his brother, his comrade, unmade and broken and a vision in blood strung up like a sacrifice to some ancient god of bloodlust and pain, calm as he held him down and washed his wounds and with every mark on Aramis, every single mark that told him what Athos had abandoned him to, he realised what a Phyrric victory it had been, how he had failed his brother, another brother and now there was no more calm. Now all his guilt and rage and fear had slithered out of the dark and secret places he had trammelled them away in, seething through his heart all at once and his heart was shining, burning, he wished he could rip holes in his skin to let it out, this incandescent heart of his.

Porthos slapped him, open-handed and hard. He staggered, mouth agape, throat raw and he realised he had no idea how much he had said out loud but the room was ringing from the last of his voice and Porthos was glaring at him wide-eyed.   
The fury burning holes in his skin went, vanished, water through sand, because there was a thud from the bed in the next room. With dread he looked and his heart constricted painfully...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Athos had a lot to say and is emo and angsty and I think I'm becoming him. He should listen to his wife though.


	10. Comfort

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aimed for the Motherload of comfort here, so here's hoping I've fulfilled what you've all been waiting for! Enjoy!

The rage in his voice had kindled some primitive part of his sleeping comrade. Half-conscious and disorientated with an unknown threat close by, Aramis had forced his injured body to try for escape, and had propelled himself against the wall, arms useless, unable to rise further. He had coiled his legs up in defence, blood from his torn feet smearing the white sheets through the wrappings.

Aramis was trembling as if he would shuck off his skin and end the pain that shared his flesh with him. His eyes rolled, hunted, unfocused as he sought to locate the threat he felt. Athos reached out to him, to comfort him, and his heart wrenched when Aramis shrank back fearfully, but he withdrew his hand and waited.

He waited. Waited for Aramis' fear to retreat, for him to remember where he was, for the scant recognition in his eyes to kindle into understanding. It happened. Slowly. It happened in layers, pain and exhaustion forming barriers between them that Aramis had to rise through, but eventually he knew him and Athos moved forward as he collapsed, the fear no longer sustaining him.

He gathered that beaten form to him, to reposition him, to lay him back down but Aramis heaved upright and wrenched his head into the crook of Athos neck as if he could find escape from his pain there, as if Athos could shut out the world for him.

“Hurts,” he whispered.

“I am sorry. I’m so sorry Aramis.” He wasn’t seeking forgiveness, he wasn’t looking for absolution. He didn’t deserve it, but he had to let Aramis know.

“I would take it all if I could. I would take away your pain.” It was a truth that went bone deep, not that it mattered.

“I’d rather die than let you feel this, Athos. I would die first.” The words were slurred and came at great cost as Athos felt what could only have been blood on his neck where Aramis lips were against his skin.

“I led you into a trap, Aramis. And I abandoned you.” He was begging to be allowed to shoulder the blame.

“I knew. Went anyway. Would follow you to hell.” Softly, a sigh. The aching truth.

“I think you’ve done that already.” He felt Aramis nod against the whiskers of his chin, an errant curl tickled at his nose.

“Not sure I could do that again though. Spite of duty. You came for me. You freed me.” The wetness against his neck was increasing with every word.

“All for one, eh?”

“Marsac tried. But I killed him.” Athos was not the only one to share his heart with ghosts.

Aramis pressed deeper into him, then threw his head back with a groan.

“ _Hurts_ though.” He was trembling with the effort not to break, breath hitching.

“Where?” Athos asked on reflex. Aramis met his gaze incredulously, an eyebrow visibly raised amongst the contours of pain on his brow. And smiled. A weak smile, a poor shade of its usual radiance, white teeth tipped with red. But a smile, despite his suffering.

Athos pressed his lips to Aramis brow, his heart rallying a little against the darkness set in his skin.

“I will get you some laudanum and then you must take sustenance. We have prepared a broth.”

Aramis reached for the water pitcher once Athos brought it near. He let him try for it and caught it immediately when Aramis could not grip it, fingers nerveless. Athos saw a flash of blackened claws but it was chased away by the frustrated sob from Aramis.

He reached for the water again with a growl and a glare but Athos stopped him and held the water to his lips himself. Aramis hesitated for a heartbeat then acquiesced, allowing Athos to do what his own hands would not.

He drank deeply, and the laudanum came next, a careful measure. He convulsed silently at the stinging alcohol in his ravished mouth, tears leaking from his clenched eyes. But soon he relaxed, shaking ceasing, bone-deep tension wicked away as the opiates freed him from the effects of torture.

Athos eased him down on the pallet again but kept his hands resting on Aramis.

“Thankyou.” Athos didn’t have to ask what for. Everything was contained in that word that slipped into the air between them, filling the spaces where any discord had resided in recent months.

“You are good company. And somebody needs to keep Porthos entertained. Otherwise he causes no end of trouble.”

There was a gentle silence between them, ruined when Aramis said small and almost timid “My hands don’t work.”

There was pleading in his eyes and Athos could not voice his own concerns. He had to give Aramis more than his own selfish fear. So he took those hands in his hands, stitched his fingers through those fingers, mindful of the breaks in the right hand.

“Squeeze,” he commanded. Aramis obeyed. The left hand produced a gentle pressure, but the right...a faint twitch. nothing more. But nothing less.

“Give them time. You are badly injured.” It wasn’t enough. Their future was uncertain, Aramis’ even more so. Even if they succeeded, Aramis would still be paying for Rocheforts whims for months to come. He needed more.

“They are stronger than they were. Have faith, Aramis. God will heal you.” Aramis nodded, relaxed, his deep, dark gaze lifted to the rafters above him as if he were seeking confirmation from the heavens. There. That’s what was required, to call on Aramis’ belief.

Athos felt guilty at offering Aramis a conviction he did not himself feel, but it brought peace to his stricken brother, and that was more important.

Aramis startled awfully at footfalls outside the room and visibly forced his body, spun tight with fear and abuse, to relax when food was brought.

“Porthos,” he breathed, the word a prayer, a benediction. He was visibly straining to sit up but could do naught but groan. Athos lifted him, ignoring the flinch at being touched, set thick pillows behind him and relinquished him to his brother. Porthos knelt, took Aramis cheek in his palm and cupping the back of his neck with the other, eyes closed and he gently brought their brows together. Aramis, through some great force of will managed to crook an arm upwards and hook his hand loosely over Porthos elbow.

“Thankyou,” he whispered, the same thanks he had given Athos. He really should stop him talking, red was seeping wetly over pale lips, but after that muzzle Athos didn’t have the heart to caution him to silence.

“Don’t think I’ll be letting you out of sight anytime soon, Aramis. You find the worst sorts of trouble.” There were a thousand things unsaid in the splintering of Porthos’ voice and Athos stepped back. The pulled apart but only so that Porthos could take his hands. Whatever he was going to say vanished as Aramis hissed at his broken fingers.

“They must be set.” Porthos’ deep eyes were full of sorrow. Aramis merely looked at him helplessly. He knew it too but it was aching to watch his courage waver.

“He has had laudanum for the pain. It should be done before he eats.” Athos stepped forward, offering a leather band to bite down on but Aramis twisted his head away and Athos did not need to ask why. Porthos’ broad hands were deft and practised, in moments he had ascertained the damage and repositioned the bones with a quick wrench. Aramis unchecked cry brought a pattering of feet but Athos waved them away without taking his eyes off the man, watching him carefully as his consciousness stuttered and righted once more. Dark eyes fluttered open and he graced them with a slim smile in the face of their concern.

“Sorry,” Porthos hummed as he splinted and firmly wrapped the lax fingers.

“I barely noticed,” was his rough reply, and Porthos chuckled fondly, even as Athos noted his gaze flicking to the tankard of broth.

“When did you last eat?”

“Days.” Aramis gave a one-sided shrug, eyes clouded.

Porthos needed no further encouragement, lifting the cup to torn lips, the stew from earlier cooked long and slow until the mutton fell apart, thinned but meaty and full of goodness. He resolutely did not react at the half-swallowed whimper from Aramis as the mere act of taking broth pained him, just quietly cajoled him through it to finish the cup whilst Athos cleansed and rewrapped his bloody feet. There was no shame in his eyes at his helplessness, not yet, but a loose fear, although Athos suspected his pain and exhaustion took precedence.

Aramis was tiring fast, but Athos pushed him to explore what mobility he had in his arms, and it was pitiably little yet better than he had feared. His right arm had almost no motion, like the ligaments that moved it inside had been cut, Aramis glaring futiley down at it as though the force of his gaze could grant it motion. The other arm left him trembling with exertion but he could lift it near to his shoulder, though it could take neither weight nor resistance.

He sank back into the sheets spent, eyes closed, and flinched when Porthos laid his hand on him.

“Please, a moment,” he gritted out. They moved away a little.

“He needs a physician.”

“We risk betraying our position that way.”

“Dammit Athos, Aramis is the only one with any knowledge on these matters! A healer would know how to treat his arms.”

“The fires are out, Paris will be crawling with Red Guards. His injuries are distinctive. _He_ is distinctive. A healer would be too great a risk for disovery."

"What do you suggest then?"

"We need a plan to take down Rochfort and we must enact it swiftly. We are running out of time. _He's_ running out of time."

"If we fail, Athos? What then?”

"We must not fail.”

They held each others gaze a heartbeat, two, sky blue and coal.

Athos sighed. “We need to get him out of Paris anyway. If we fail he will have no protection. They will find him and we will have only delayed his execution and prolonged his suffering. Constance could take him.”

“I’ll leave you to have that conversation with her, my friend,” Porthos chuckled.

Aramis was asleep, overcome with exhaustion, pale and bruised against the sheets. They encased his damaged arms in linen, a sling for each one, fastening them firmly across his neck and ribs to stabilise the joints. Porthos’ fingers were shaking as he tied the last knots and Athos found himself offering back the comfort he had been given earlier.

"We got him out, Porthos. He will heal. Tomorrow, we must not fail.”

 

                   ****************************************************************

 

 

They had come for him. A pistol reported, blades crashed together, a thud against the door and Porthos fell backwards through it, prevented from rising by a sword-tip held to his throat. Men in red leather followed. His body would not co-operate, the most he could manage was to half-rise and press fearfully against the pillows, pistol impossible to reach despite it laying on the floor beside him, although he tried to roll for it anyway.

They fisted hands in his hair and dragged him to his feet, laughing when his legs buckled in pain and they made sport of hoisting him to his broken feet again to watch him twist and sink again, then up again before they threw him to his knees. A boot to his spine sent him from his knees to his side.

They locked an iron collar over his throat and shackled his ankles to a short chain and all he could do was lie on the floor, holding Porthos' eyes with his and try to swallow down cries of fear and try to force his arms to do anything but twitch useless at his sides and he failed in both.

They dragged him by the collar, choking, up and back and to his knees, bound his useless arms across his bare chest with rope - _bound again, he couldn't do this_ \- their fingers catching cruelly in every angry bruise.

His brothers were dragged in, irons on their wrists and fury in their eyes to witness his shame.

Then Rochefort was black and gold in the doorway, Rochefort was advancing on him as he was held helpless, _again_ , and he knew he would not survive this encounter.

His mind bade him be still and stoic but his mind was no longer in control and he propelled himself backwards, brought up tight by the chain to his throat and colliding with the knees of his captors. He could not contain the hopeless sob that shuddered through his lungs, it was not death he was afraid of, but dying in pieces, the things that Rochefort would do to him before death came.

And now his brothers too, would die for their crime of giving him a reprieve.

The iron muzzle glinted dully in Rocheforts hand and Aramis could not stop the tears that spilled from his eyes nor the desperate sob that coloured the air between them with his terror.

Porthos was straining against the bonds and the guards arrayed about him, inarticulate fury. D'Artagnan was arguing viciously, trying to draw attention to himself and away from Aramis. Athos though, was begging, calling on the law, the Bible, the spirit of Christ, voice fast and breaking as he pleaded desperately for mercy for his broken body.

"No! Please!"

"Yes," Rochefort hissed, a smile like an adder, a guard tangled rough fingers in his hair, and he gripped Aramis by the temple to trap his head, to gag him again. Rochefort took the side of his jaw, ran a thumb across the tears.

"No! No!" If his last words would be him begging, if he was to be beaten and chained and muzzled again like he was some dangerous dog then-

-He wrenched his head around violently and sank his teeth into Rochefort's hand, biting down with all his strength into the meat there, snarling his last defiance through the blood spilling into his mouth...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops. Look what I did there.
> 
> *leaves town ahead of pitchfork waving crowd*


	11. Laudare

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please excuse the uncharacteristically late update, real life took a left at Weirdville and then stopped in Busy-town for a while.
> 
> Trigger warnings if needed, PTSD.
> 
> Did a quick grammar edit and realised I have accidentally included a line from a song in the first scene.  
> 'Momentum' by Vienna Teng. An achingly beautiful song, like all of her work. Well worth checking out.
> 
> Contains quotes from actual torture victims from medical/psychological studies and interviews I've read, as well as personal PTSD/trauma experience.

...He was torn from his nightmare by a pained curse from Athos and the spike of agony that shot through his skull from the force of the bite.

"Mother of God Aramis, wake up!"

"Is it a seizure?"

"No Porthos, a nightmare I think, and a powerful one at that."

"It must be, to fling him around the room so."

Not Rochefort. Not the Red Guard. They had not been found.

He stilled. Twisting his head weakly, he realised he was on the floor, Porthos' chest beneath his head.

“I am going to have to stop waking up in your arms, brother. People will talk."

A shocked silence and then a booming laugh rimmed with a dry chuckle from Athos. A little loud, a little forced, but it didn't matter.

"Let them talk," came a rumble from beneath him at the same time as a laconic "That's hardly fair Aramis. You knocked him down with your thrashing."

"Hmmm, you're pretty dangerous when you're asleep."

Athos was still covering the bite with his fingers.

"Sorry," he whispered. "I thought you were-" he cut off when he felt his voice fracture, his face was wet from tears, there was no need to add to them in the waking world.

“There is no harm. You barely broke the skin.” Athos voice was gentle, as if he spoke to a fearful child.

He looked down. At his arms. Bound tight across his chest.

He heaved against the strappings on his arms, but he was held immobile and his dream, his imprisonment, and his present collided and threatened to overwhelm him. The room spun, reality shivered.

Athos touched his face, watched him try to breathe again. His eyes like cool ice, calming, filling up his world until he came back to himself.

"Take it off!" he cried, any command his voice may have carried shattered by the lilt of a plea.

“I will not be bound!" He had tried for imperious and ended up begging.

"Aramis, the joints must be stabilised." Athos admonished.

"Please, do not bind me again." His voice was soft and slurred.

"Take them off, please. You can't...I can't..." He bit off the words as they became a sob, clenching his eyes shut, unable to even hide his face in his vulnerability.

A hand settled gently against the swell of his bicep and even though he knew, he _knew_ it was Athos, he could not stop the flinch. Athos snatched back his hand as if it burned.

"I'm sorry, Athos," he gasped. "My body is....not my own. I can't control any of it. Any of it."

Suddenly, he wasn't talking about this moment, and wasn't that the point of torture? The powerlessness, the control lying solely in the hands of those who would hurt you? The knowledge that there was no limit to the increase of pain or the duration of suffering? He wished he could shut the world out, he wished Athos could not see his heart so well, see how timid and fearful it had become.

"You'll take it back, Aramis." He opened his eyes to meet his friends sorrowful gaze.

“The control. Your courage. It's not gone. You can take it back. You’ve done it before. Just give yourself time, you have been ill-used." There were tears standing in Athos' eyes now, and Aramis realised he didn't mind that his friend could see so deeply into his heart, not if there was a chance Athos could help him find his way out of it.

He tethered his spirit to the conviction in Athos' eyes and nodded, but couldn’t stop himself straining at the slings that bound his arms.

Athos sighed.“Neither of us will get any peace if I don’t give you a concession.”

Deft fingers worked the knots at the nape of his neck, and he felt the bindings on his left arm ease a little, enough to slip the arm out if he so desired.

“You are to keep that arm in the sling. I am trusting you not to injure yourself further.”

“Thankyou.” There was air in his lungs again.

"Let's get you off the floor."

"Help me stand."

"No way."

"Porthos!"

“Rochefort broke your feet. You are not standing."

"I-"

"Please Aramis. Don't make me watch you hurt more than you already are."

Any other time Porthos would have threatened to tie him to the bed to keep him an obedient patient. This was not any other time, and Aramis closed his eyes, acquiescing wearily. They lifted him back to the bed as though he were a child, laying him half-reclined against thick pillows.

He managed to keep his pain at being jostled to himself, and when they asked if he was comfortable, he nodded. A lie, but he well knew there was no comfortable position to rest in with two injured shoulders, no place that even gentle pressure did not set a fierce ache in the ruptured joints. He lost a few moments in his internal struggle against the pain, dimly aware of his brothers conversing and Athos leaving.

For a moment he felt himself settling under the gentle weight of sleep, but there was a flash of curved iron and red leather and he jolted fully awake with a plea on his lips. Porthos was there, regarding him sorrowfully.

"What is the hour?"

Mother Mary it hurt to speak, every movement pulling at the wounds inside him, the words themselves catching on broken teeth and the ruin of his tongue. The iron tang of his blood had him tensing painfully against the memories of metal in his mouth, being bound and muzzled, the memories that had torn themselves loose of their proper time and come thrusting through into his waking moments, his now.

Porthos had answered but he hadn't heard. He cocked his head in confusion and his friend understood.

"Near dawn," he repeated.

“Dawn,” he echoed. Dawn tasted like blood. He should have noticed. Even in the city there was birdsong. He was to be broken at dawn. Smashed limbs braided through wooden spokes. There was a ringing in his ears, was that steelsong underneath it?

"Aramis, breathe!" Porthos' voice was urgent. He sounded scared. Aramis dragged his eyes away from the door. Porthos was staring at him.

Him.

Not the door.

If there were sounds of sword fighting, Porthos would have heard it, would be looking at the door. His eyes skittered to the door anyway, just to check. His ears had always been sharper than most.

"Aramis, what are you looking for?"

"I see him, Porthos."

"What do you mean?" It was a redundant rumble, Porthos knew exactly what he meant.

"I can feel him. Watching me. He's in every shadow, behind the shutters, the door. He's with me when I close my eyes. I see the bridle..." he swallowed.

"I thought I would die in it."

There was a thumb on his cheek, wiping away fresh tears. There was a cloth at his lips, wiping away fresh blood.

“You will not die in it. You will not die like that.”  His friends voice shook, threatening to crack.

“He will hunt us. He will kill you for saving me. He is coming.”

His eyes were on the door again.

“Aramis, he is not coming. We are safe for the moment.”

“He-”

“We will strike first. We have Vargas. Constance will go with you, take you outside the city, and the rest of us go to the Palace. Rochefort will be ruined.”

He wanted to tell them not to go, he wanted to tell them to save themselves, but the Queen was still in danger, and the Dauphin. He could neither walk without debilitating pain nor bear arms. The most vital battle of his life and he would be unable to participate. Incapable of assisting the outcome in any way. A broken bystander.

He was startled from his thoughts by footsteps approaching the door behind Porthos. He strained to see but Porthos’ bulk obscured the line of sight to the door and he might as well have been fettered still for all the freedom to move his broken body had.

“Easy Aramis, it’s just Constance."

She moved so he could see her. She offered him a bright smile, but her porcelain skin bore the marks of tears. She set aside a tray and embraced him gently. He tried to somehow not stiffen at her touch. 

"I’m sorry.”

“Whatever for?”

“You nearly died because of me.”

“I nearly died because Rochefort is a madman. We were just his revenge when he couldn’t get what he wanted. When he couldn’t have the Queen.”

There was a deep truth in those words, no matter how cursed he felt.

“I told you before, I did not blame you then and I do not blame you now.”

She had told him. Long ago, mere days ago, when they were imprisoned in nearby cells, when his chains were longer, long enough that if he stretched painfully against them he could just about see her in the gloom. They had prayed together deep into the night, and the guards that had come to silence him had been more careful with their blows, ensuring they fell on flesh that would not be seen at his trial. Chains he had fought fiercely as she was led to her death, hurling himself desperately at his restraints, tearing skin under the iron whilst she moved like a queen to her fate, dignified. Calm.

He snatched his thoughts back to the present. He was exhausted, he didn’t want to relive every cruelty that had passed on their heads, though it seemed he must. He found himself staring at the white linen round his wrists that covered the wounds, _white cuffs, wrists crossed and bound_ and cast his gaze desperately for something else to focus on.

She offered a cup of water, and helped him drink when he nodded. He had thought he had managed to hide how much the mere act of drinking pained him, until she tutted.

“How is your pain?”

“I’ve had worse,” he quipped, voice rough. He looked away, he could not bear the weight of her sympathy.

“That is not what I asked.”

“I can bear it."

She quirked an eyebrow.

"It’s not bad. So long as I don’t try to move.”

“Except your mouth.”

“Except my mouth,” he agreed, wearily.

She tipped a measure into the cup from a bottle of opium tincture. He eyed it warily.

“It’s laudanum.”

“I know.”

The brandy in the tincture reignited the hellfire in his mouth as he swallowed, and he did not have the strength to conceal his pain, a wretched whimper. Constance had fresh tears brimming in her eyes when the worst had passed, and she gently wiped a bloody trickle from the corner of his mouth.

“Any better?”

“Much,” he murmured, marvelling at speech without pain.

“Laudanum. From ‘laudare’. ‘To praise’. I well know that now.”

The confused thoughts ricocheting around his mind slowed, stilled. The grinning terror from his dreams that had him startle like a beaten dog at every movement, at every sound, blessedly retreated. Still there, still looming black and gold in the doorway, but distant, disconnected, disembodied as his mind sharpened, _intensified_. The gift of the poppy helped him fight his ghosts once again. Even with the laudanum easing his pain his fingers had not recovered their dexterity, and he could feel a cold fire through his forearm and under the skin of his left hand when he tried.

Constance wordlessly helped him with a warm broth, it was important to continue ending his days of enforced fasting slowly, and made no mention of his infirmity.

She bent to kiss his brow as Athos reentered, and this time he managed not to flinch at the touch.

“Now rest. And please stop talking. Let yourself heal.”

*****************************************************************************

D’Artagnan lingered in the doorway, uncertain and almost timid. Face clean but red-eyed, perhaps from lack of sleep, perhaps from crying.

Athos forgot what hero worship was like until d’Artagnan crashed into their lives, angry and grieving. He’s no fool, he knows the image they cut together, the Inseparables. He knows how men of war are seen by the public eye too, how the stories would have people think that lesser gods walked among them. D’Artagnan had seen people he loves cut down, slain. He’s never seen them broken before, not so deliberately. He’s never witnessed premeditated cruelty in quite this fashion.

In d’Artagnan's eyes, Aramis is a hero brought low, a hero someone tried to steal from him. So Athos does not laugh at him hovering in the doorway, slim fingers playing absently in the spine of a book, afraid to approach and bring about the moment he might find a hero changed. Gone.

“I hear you started a city-wide riot to ensure my escape,” Aramis greeted him lightly.

D’Artagnan answered with a grin, white and fierce in his tanned face, and it coaxed an echo from Aramis.

“I just directed their anger into something useful. The Musketeers were already rioting in the streets!”

“Athos always said you were smarter than you looked.”

“Constance said I was not to let you talk too much. If you persist I may have to gag you!” he admonished jokingly.

He recoiled at his own foolish words as Aramis’ breath snagged in his throat.

“Oh God Aramis, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that! I would never...I’m sorry!” he cried.

Athos swallowed the urge to drag him away by his foppish hair and knock his head into a wall. It wouldn’t introduce tact or sense into the boy’s skull anyway.

Aramis gave a wan smile. It was meant to comfort d’Artagnan. It was a lie, but it worked.

“Here, I’ve brought you this.”

A book of psalms, and Athos is touched by the gesture, and can tell Aramis is too by the way his eyes spark.

His hands twitched weakly but he did not attempt to reach for the book.

“I have not the strength, d’Artagnan,” he whispered, weary and pained.

The boys face fell. “Oh.”

And swiftly brightened. “Then I shall read it to you. Which ones do you like?”

There was a beautiful peace in Aramis’ face at d’Artagnans words, his smile real this time, and Athos missed the answer as he turned and left them to it.

 

He found Treville and Porthos sharing a low conversation with a lean breakfast of salted meat and bread, Porthos positioned so Aramis was never out of his eyesight.

“Milady has offered to accompany Aramis and Constance,” Athos informed them as he pulled up a chair.

“She has a carriage arriving soon.” Nobody asked where his wife had procured a carriage from. Some things were better left a mystery.

“Perhaps I should accompany them. For protection.” Athos had never heard Porthos sound so unsure before, voice unsteady.

“Between those two women, he’s safer than anyone else. Safer than we will be.”

“They won’t be able to handle him if he is to have another one of those dreams.”

"We have a mission to complete." Athos’ voice sounded cool, but he could taste the brittleness in it.

Porthos grunted noncommittally, eyes gravitating to the pale form on the pallet again.

"Porthos. The mission."

"I know. I KNOW Athos, I just...if he wakes like that again... It is not reasonable, but I cannot shake the feeling that I should not let him from my sight.”

Their captain spoke before Athos could. "That is understandable, given what transpired between you last seeing him at the convent and now. But we have to go. His rescue will have been for naught if we do not get Vargas to the king now!"

Athos added his weight to the argument too.

"Porthos, if we do not do this now we will have lost. We are out of time. They will find us and drag him back in chains and us too. If you want to save him you must leave him. If we should fail, Rochefort will make sure his death is talked about for a hundred years.”

“Aye, you are right. _You’re right._ It doesn’t make it any easier.”

It didn’t. But this chapter needed closing. They had to rid their lives of the sword of Damocles, of Rochefort, once and for all. They needed to change their Pyrrhic victory to something better, or die trying and leave their women and wounded to face their new lives as fugitives.

Porthos slammed a tankard against the wooden table.

“It’s nearly dawn.”

A red dawn.

“Let’s get this over with.”

 

D’Artagnan had pulled a chemise of white linen over Aramis’ pliant frame, followed by an unslashed doublet, rebinding his arms across his breast and laid a woolen half-cape on the pallet beside him, for winter had a firm grip on the new day and the carriage would be little protection from the cold. The room smelled strongly of propolis again and Porthos remarked lightly that the former farmer had some uses after-all. Aramis was smiling softly at the banter, opium gentled the edges of his pain. Porthos helped draw soft leather over his beaten feet, swelling receding a little but so tender that touch was only possible because of the laudanum.

Their farewells were soft, sombre, and there was an agony in Aramis' eyes entirely separate from the body as they carried him to the awaiting carriage, settling him into a wide leather seat. The stubborn fool refused to let them lay him down, already chafing at his status as a cripple, for however long that would last.

Fervour leant his damaged body strength as he slipped his left arm from the binding sling to grip Porthos by the lace at his collar. Porthos brought his own scarred hand to cover Aramis’ torn knuckles but made no move to pull away. Athos saw the tears shining in both their eyes and silently added his hand to theirs, and d’Artagnan settled his own a heartbeat later.

“All for one,” d'Artagnan said, quiet but strong, and Athos felt rather than saw the others smile, a new hope kindled.

"And one for all." It was a whisper. A plea. A prayer. A promise.

Porthos gently pushed Aramis’ hand back, replacing his arm in the sling. He let his fingers linger on him for a heartbeat, then closed the door.

Athos heard urgent goodbyes between d’Artagnan and Constance and she climbed in beside Aramis, a gentle hand on his shoulder.

Milady was watching him with an unreadable expression from the darkness inside, and he wished he had spoken to her, wished he had been brave enough to give her more.

“Protect them,” he murmured, and by the quirk of amusement on her red lips he knew she had heard, and could taste the same irony as he did. Scarcely a year since her vengeance had nearly cost them all so much, and now they placed their lives under her protection.

As the carriage pulled away, Athos laid his hand against Porthos' spine. Porthos shook himself. He shed the mantle of friend, guard, protector. What was left was a banked fire in a forge, vengeance long denied a concentrated need now. Athos felt his own need rise snapping with his brothers, and d’Artagnan drew alongside them, vibrating with his own in answer. Their path set, dawn was here. The hour was now and they mounted the horses and rode to their fate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the evil cliffhanger last chapter, I hope this one has made up for hurting you all so much!  
> Again, I have strived for accuracy. Drawn from my own experiences with PTSD, and from the experiences of others. Also drawn from my own experiences of a twice dislocated shoulder.
> 
> And I feel obliged to info-drop on you - apparently the word 'intensify' was coined to describe the effect opium had on the mind. Aramis is quite right about the origins of the word laudanum, and from the same Latin root we get laudable 'worthy of praise'. He is very clever.
> 
> Incidentally one of the components in opium, Morphine, is named after Morpheus, the God of sleep.
> 
> As a species humans have at least an 8,000 year old relationship with Opium poppies, and medieval texts described it as Gods gift.


	12. Vejovis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still alive! Work went from a 35 hour week to three weeks of 70+  
> I was so exhausted I didn't even do laundry, let alone write.  
> I've now lost that job in the last few days and I'm still not doing laundry. But as you can see, I am writing.  
> I hope this chapter helps me atone for my sins of abandoning you wonderful people.  
> Once again, thanks to Sue Pokorny for her thorough and patient beta work.

They gained the palace with relative ease. Through the pricking vengeance thirsting in their blood, they witnessed the exodus of the royal population. Servants, courtiers, ambassadors, all leaving, chivvied by the guard.

Taking the servants entrance and ducking through the kitchens they managed to avoid resistance, but there were voices in the passageway they needed to take to the stairs. Athos signalled them to halt, Porthos pressed against him and he could feel the fury crackling beneath their skins.

“-if there’s anything left of him to execute. The lieutenant is a known degenerate and that Musketeer is as pretty as a maiden.”

“They had better bring him back alive, I have a score to settle.”

“What score?”

“The traitor broke my nose! And blacked his eye!”

“And I won’t be able to use this arm for another week!”

“You telling me that four on one and the one in chains, he still managed to beat you up? Your mothers must be so proud of the men they’ve raised!” A fourth voice joined them.

“It was worth the black eye to hear him sing when we dropped him. Have you ever seen strappado? They go from suffocating from their own weight to having their arms ripped apart in seconds.”

“I was there for that, you idiot. He was crying for his mother by the time we were finished. Or would have, if he’d been able to speak!”

There was a mewling sound, a pantomime of muffled screaming to demonstrate and mocking laughter chased it, and there was not enough blood on earth to quench the desire for vengeance in Athos’ breast.

He reached round to grip Porthos’ arm, but his fingers closed on empty air. d’Artagnan was gone too, dark bolts hurling themselves around the corner.

He exhaled, and caught Treville’s eye. Secrecy was pointless now.

Athos didn’t bother with weapons. He saw a brief glimpse of a bruised, misshapen nose before it exploded under his fist. Bone and cartilage shattered and his opponent dropped to the floor, howling.

Porthos had a man with a black eye by the throat, pinning him to the wall, struggling. He clawed at Porthos’ face but Porthos just caught him by the sleeve and smashed the hand against the wall, once, twice, and knuckles burst against the stone. Thrice and the jagged ends of his finger bones tore through his palm. He screamed then, but Porthos just twisted his fingers against the man’s throat and crushed the cartilage that housed his airway, before dropping him to choke on the ground.

One guard had lost his sword to d’Artagnan, favouring what appeared to be a sprained wrist, and attempted to flee, unable or unwilling to withstand against Athos’ fierce protégé. He dropped with d’Artagnan’s dagger in his back.

“Not quite as easy as torturing a man shackled to the rafters, is it?”

The guard spat at him from the floor. D’Artagnan kicked him in the jaw and he bit his own tongue near clean in two.

The opponent Athos had felled was struggling to reach his pistol but Athos hoisted him by the lapels, smashed his fist again into the ruin of the man’s nose, and again. He dropped dead in Athos’ grip, shards of bone driven upwards into his brain.

Treville had wrested the blade from the remaining guard with ease, his opponent trying to glare menacingly at them from his position at swordpoint and somehow looking more nervous for it.

“What is happening? Where is Rochefort?” Conversational, calm was d’Artagnan’s tone, although he smiled grimly at their captive’s flinch. There was a hard promise in the sibilance of his tone and Athos heart swelled in pride.

“Why should I tell you?” Their foe’s voice was ugly with contempt. Athos’ fist hurled him to the ground, and his composure withered when he realised he was spitting out broken teeth.

“Musketeer dogs!” he whimpered, trying to crawl away. Porthos kicked him in the flank and twisted his right arm behind his back. He yelped.

“Answer the question,” Athos warned.

“You won’t get away with this!”

“Athos, this man has skinned his knuckles. I think we need to give him a message from Aramis.”

Porthos was Vejovis himself. Athos fancied lightning shimmered under his skin. He wrenched upwards. The man’s shoulder ruptured and Porthos cut off his screams with a rough hand.

“That,” he told his victim deliberately “was a lovely song. Would you like to cry for your mother now?”

                                                                        *********

Running. She clenched her jaw and re-checked her pistols. The people she loved were riding to danger whilst she was seeking refuge. She embraced the resentment willingly, for she knew it was shielding her heart from the biting concern.

Milady was an impassive presence beside her, affecting boredom but her fingers rested near her own concealed weapons. Constance couldn’t bear the weight of silence any longer.

“Why are you helping us?”

“I have my reasons.”

“Athos? You love him don’t you.”

“Do you really want to sit here, pretending to be friends? Discussing men like the powdered dandies at court?”

Constance smiled grimly. They weren’t friends, but it did not seem that they were enemies any longer, and Milady was refreshingly direct.

“He’s different around you.” She caught Milady glaring at her from the corner of her eye, and pretended not to see the faint flush in her pale cheeks. She considered pressing the issue, if only to banish the awful imaginings of their friends dying, but another strangled groan from their wounded charge interrupted her.

“Aramis?” She spoke cautiously, unwilling to startle him.

His eyes were closed but he was nowhere near the peace of sleep. Sweat beaded on his brow despite the chill of winter, torn lips moved soundlessly in prayer but even that could not stem the low moans of pain that issued from him with every lurch the carriage gave. His left hand had worked free from the sling and had inched up to feebly grip the junction of his motionless right arm, what little strength he had trying to aid the limb as every fault on the planes of the road jarred the ruined joints.

She laid a careful hand against the corded shoulder and was unprepared for how badly he reacted, flinching away from her touch, a bloody spray from his lips carried on a sharp exhale. His dark eyes met hers, black with pain and a little wild. She wished she could soothe his suffering but such was the cruelty that had passed on him that even the kindest touch had been ruined.

“Let me help,” she breathed. “Tell me your pain.” She was affecting an authority she did not have, but his torment could not be ignored, nor endured in silence.

“It drops,” he gasped. “Every motion….the bone falls out of joi-” his words were displaced by a broken yelp as the wheels struck a hollow. She could only hold him as he keened his misery against her, and she couldn’t tell which one of them were shaking.

“Laudanum,” she stated, fumbling for the bottle. He shook his head weakly.

“Later. Or it will run out by the time it’s really needed.”

“It’s really needed now. We can get more easily enough.” He eyed the proffered tincture warily, a medic’s calculation, keen intellect despite the fragility of his spirit.

“I know you’ve had some today, but you need more. You are not at your limit for the laudanum yet, but you are for pain. You cannot travel like this.”

There was no argument in the look he gave her. There was something else though, some decision she couldn’t fathom being wrestled with in his expression.

“We have a long journey and we are scant minutes in. Haven’t you suffered enough?” Her voice was calm, the voice her mother used to soothe her childhood fears, but she would be weeping soon if she had to bear helpless witness to every sound of agony their journey dragged from him.

Then the wildness in his eyes quieted, he nodded.

Twice, she attempted to pour him a careful measure into a cup, and twice the carriage lurched just as she set the edge of the glass to the lip of the cup, and she had to move quickly to not spill it. Each time, the pain was in his voice was freer, his control fracturing. Milady was rigid with tension beside her.

“Quickly, or he will be screaming before long and we shall not fail to be noticed.”

“The bottle,” he gasped, desperation crimson on his lips. She held the glass to his torn mouth and tipped it cautiously, poised to pull it back once he’d taken the right amount. Too much could be lethal.

She registered the calculation in his eyes too late.

Calloused fingers clamped over hers and tightened. She tried to jerk away, there was too great a dose of laudanum being dealt but he would not let her go. There were tears on his cheeks from the stinging tincture and she managed to drag away, his damaged hands were not that strong but she was too late.

The bottle was empty.

That dose would kill him.

“What have you done?”

He smiled calmly into her shock. “What I must. It is the only way.”

“Suicide is never the way! I know your pain is great but do you not have the courage to heal?”

He looked at her for a long moment, before looking past her to Milady, and even her impassivity had been broken, concern playing across her alabaster features.

“It is not as simple as self-slaughter. Take us to the palace.”

Milady’s mouth twisted in understanding, a little grim, a little amused, and she pulled the bellcord. Constance glared at her, confused and upset that she was still struggling to understand. The carriage lurched to a stop and Milady got out.

“What are you doing? The Palace? If the laudanum doesn’t kill you then Rochefort surely will!”

“I will not hide!” he cried bitterly. Milady re-seated herself and the carriage started forwards. “He will kill them all and hunt us down. I would die with them rather than that. I cannot abandon my brothers.”

“You cannot help them!” It was cruel but it was true. Rochefort had been brutal and thorough. Could he even walk?

“I’ll give my last breath to save them. If that is all I can do then I will do that. I will die anyway. They are pitted against the devil. To tip that battle I will gladly give my life, and should we fail I will die beside them.”

“You are delusional-”

“My mind is clear!”

“Even if we win you will die!”

He smiled, conviction lending him a valance of peace. “I willingly pay that price. For them.”

“Aramis-”

“It is my life to give. It is my choice. My last choice.” His voice was splintering, hope had never grappled so fiercely with despair.

“Forgive me Constance,” he whispered. His dark eyes searched her soul. “Help me.”

She wanted to argue further, she wanted to name him a fool and convince him to run but Death was in his eyes and she could not refuse him. He burned with a dry fire, all semblance of the Aramis she knew scorched away, the wit and the laughter, the love and the joy, he looked out with eyes that were dead already and it scared her.

It scared her because he was right. It scared her because his words were lifted straight from the pieces of her soul that raged fiercely against the confines of her sex. She had been passive scenery in the story of her own life for far too long, and now everyone she loved had their lives on the line and she would be damned if she would not join them. Her life was her own to risk, and even if they failed it would be glorious and true.

They would die unbeaten instead of living hunted and fearful. Reckless to the end, but his words had singed away the bleak miasma of despair that had fogged her heart. She gave the only answer she could.

“I’ll stand with you.” He opened his mouth to protest and she silenced him with a glare.

“It is my life. It is my choice.” Understanding came with a rueful smile.

“I will help you.” She pressed a kiss to his worn brow, and untied the knots at his neck.

                                                                              *********

D’Artagnan whirled away from a pistol shot and returned one of his own before ducking back down next to Athos. A thrilling light was in his eyes. Athos took his own shot and swayed to the side as a musket ball showered marble chips into his hair. They were moments from being pinned down but they had given Porthos cover to clear the staircase with Vargas.

There were footsteps behind him, movement, and he finished reloading to spin and press the muzzle of the gun to Aramis’ heart.

He nearly dropped the weapon in shock.

As if God had answered all desperate prayers and vanished all knowledge of pain and torture from his brother, he stood before him, gallant Aramis once again, a smile of benediction on his lips, almost euphoric.

Athos' stomach lurched in dread.

“You’re standing!”

“Just.”

“Aramis, that must be agony.”

“It is,” he agreed quietly. A red-stained smile.

"Aramis. What did you do?"

"What I had to, my friend." He was slurring, from the damage to his mouth or something else, Athos could not tell.

Constance was pressed to d’Artagnan, a grief he didn’t understand in her eyes. He opened his mouth to demand an explanation but ducked instead as more stone-dust rained down upon them.

Aramis didn’t duck. He did not even flinch. He stood there as if made whole again, his arms unbound, a pistol cradled in his palm. No, not cradled. Tied there loosely with what looked to be a soft bandage.

"I must go to the Queen." Athos lifted his eyes, still unsure he was not witnessing an apparition, some fancy of the heart, so desperate was he to be unburdened by the guilt of his latest failure.

Aramis’ eyes were calm and black. Too black. The pupils were blown, no iris visible. And off he went in the direction of her chambers, on feet that should not be able to bear his weight, swaying but a little.

Athos made to spring after him but enemies were advancing and he had to follow Porthos, he had to get Vargas to the king. So he snarled his rage at the choice before him, between love and duty and blessed Constance caught his eye.

"I'm going with him," and Athos had no time for doubts and no heart for them either, having seen what these women in his life could do, so nodded his thanks and turned his head towards the battle before him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What, did you think I was going to give Aramis a break?  
> Hahahahaha  
> No.
> 
> I love writing Athos. He is a great excuse to drop classical references into the text.
> 
> I hope everyone enjoyed the boys getting their revenge. I don't know if you noticed but I mirrored Aramis' injuries to theirs and also (mostly) gave them similar injuries to the ones each of them were talking about before Porthos and d'Artagnan rushed in. I felt poetic justice would be appreciated.


	13. Prayer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thousand apologies for the delay. Well, a hundred, as that's about as many days it has been since I updated. Maybe.   
> Moved house, new job, all the stress, and the things that Real Life throws at you to stop you writing, coupled with a refusal for my Muse to do anything worthwhile with fight scenes. So many, many thanks for all of you who left comments requesting an end to the cliffhanger and to know what happened next. They honestly made the difference and made me kick my ass until I sat and wrote the next part. Comments are love and get stories finished, or at least un-stalled, and I'm grateful.

There was nothing left to do but pray, and galvanise her soul against what was to come. Her sovereign husband had been invaded, his senses usurped by the devilry in the Compte de Rochefort's tongue. Her little son was screaming somewhere, cries shivering through the airy rooms of the palace, and the sound threatened the dignity she wrapped around herself. What would become of him when she was no more? Would Louis denounce him as a bastard? Would her brother have him slain as Louis son when the fragile peace between France and Spain shattered after her death? To be so close to that precious life and be forbidden to soothe him….  
Her prayers fell more ardently from her lips as his pitch increased, as though her susurrations could reach him rooms away.

Her thoughts turned to Aramis as his blood flaked to dust at her fingertips. The crucifix was glinting innocently in the winter sun. The little hollow under her ribs that flushed warm at his memory, thrummed with a forbidden sentiment, it was a leaden weight now, limned in a razor fear. His sentence started a day ago by Rochforts decree, a sacrifice to the Comptes vengeance, perhaps even now twitching in his protracted death throes...her prayers faltered, a pained whine piercing them.

_Take him, Lord. He perjured himself but he did so for love, for blood, for sovereign...if any sin deserves your forgiveness, it is his._

Breathe in. Breathe out.

She resumed her prayer, her piety the only barrier against the awful silence. No news, no handmaids, no visitors allowed.  
Perhaps the silence had a reason. Perhaps it held a miracle. Surely, surely Rochfort would have come to her, to taunt her with a recounting of the screams her Musketeer had made as they broke his body, the jeers of the crowd, the disgrace of his death. That he had not done so, could that mean some unforeseen miracle had intervened? Had plucked him from his fate?   
Be still, she bade herself. For a hope like that would unmake her. The best she could hope for was that his end had come quickly, had lasted mere hours instead of the days it could take, that the shock had rendered him insensate.   
She grasped the metal of the crucifix so hard she imagined she would draw her own blood to paint the gold alongside his. If the hope she nurtured in the space of Rochefort's silence would unmake her, the truths she was unable to steer her mind from conjuring were worse.

“Forgive us poor sinners, now and in the hour of our deaths.”

“Amen.”  
She kept from startling. He had appeared behind her, so silent that devilry must be in his blood, but her prayers had prepared her for the doom he brought.

She would not falter. The chain was cool against the white skin of her throat, and the crucifix bit her palm. She was the blood of Kings and Emperors, and she would not flinch. The garrotte tightened, her heart sang fierce in her ears and the sound of a pistol rocked the tableau.

Aramis lived. A miracle had passed on them for fierce Aramis burned bright in the doors like a warrior of God, and the effect on the demon in Rochefort was powerful. He staggered, palpably shocked although the shot had gone wide and split the marble at their feet. A fine dust drifted over the hem of her dress, such foolish things one notices when death is an outcome yet to be decided.

“You cannot be here!” Rochfort cried

Aramis said nothing, but advanced, rapier held loosely in his direction.

“How are you here? I broke you!” It was the snarl of a cornered animal.

Aramis said nothing, but advanced, a red smile.

Constance less than a pace behind him.

“Some devilry is this. She is mine!” Rochefort lunged, but shock made him clumsy and Aramis swayed aside with a sliding parry. Rochefort lunged again, and was parried once more. Aramis staggered and was steadied by Constance, who moved like a shadow behind him, a shadow with more life than his pale features. The spell was broken.   
Rocheforts shock turned to a vicious satisfaction.

“I don’t know how you're standing but you are still ruined, aren't you? You are useless to your regiment now. Did you come here looking for death? Did you expect to be slain swiftly, so you wouldn't have to face being a cripple for the rest of your miserable days?”   
He bore down heavily, a bludgeoning force behind his blade and Aramis’ grip failed, the hilt twisted from nerveless fingers and clattering loud on the floor.

“I will have you in chains again, Aramis. I will have you scream again.”   
A rapier tip resting in the hollow of his throat, Aramis did not flinch, but lifted his chin and smiled. There was blood on his lips and blue dusting the angles of his face.

“You will not,” he replied. “It is in the hands of God now. Your power here has ended.”

Confusion marked Rocheforts face but he barely missed a heartbeat before looking to wound again.  
“Marguerite is dead. She killed herself because of you.”

Aramis’ brow twisted in sorrow and grief, then finally rage. He spat a mouthful of blood at his foe, swatting aside the steel at his collar and fumbling for his main gauche but was forced back a pace to avoid his foes blade, Rocheforts recovery too swift.

The awesome joy in Anne's heart was shot through with doubt now, Aramis’ unexpected arrival had eclipsed the details she now saw, the shadows on his face more than the winterlight, more than a sleepless night or two, one eye half-closed, and a trace of red at the corners of his bluing lips. He was unsteady too, barely avoiding the Comptes blade, movements ungraceful and strained, breath too fast.

What had they done to him?

Aramis staggered again and nearly lost his grip on his blade, a desperate edge to his stance, and Constance swung her spent pistol as hard as she could muster. It cracked against Rocheforts spine and he pivoted to face her. She retreated, he advanced and Aramis stumbled to intercede, his hand fumbling with his dagger.

“Get back!” he cried, somehow manoeuvring both Anne and Constance behind the scant shelter of his body, and somehow managing to half-raise the blade to parry another blow from Rochfort, but he was fading fast and he lost his grip on that blade too, the rapier only half deflected and ripping through the flesh of his right arm. Rocheforts heavy-ringed fist sent him breathless to the floor and he screamed as the join of his shoulders gave way when he tried to rise.

“Cease this, Rochefort!” Anne was giving voice to her desperation even as he used his booted toes to turn Aramis’ head towards him, placing his sole against the prone mans throat and pressing down. Nerveless hands clawed uselessly against Rocheforts boots and blood from his new wound left a bright arc across the pale marble.  
Constance shoved at him, hard, and he rewarded her with a vicious backhand, distracted from his final vengeance. Aramis rolled, trying to get his arms underneath him, to raise himself from the floor, and keening as he failed. Rocheforts boot to his stomach coiled him double on the stone and hands closed over his throat. He managed to raise one hand to batter at Rocheforts face and the Compte bellowed as his injured eye was jarred.

Anne’s joy had turned to ash, hope sputtered and dimmed. Something had stolen the strength from Aramis and his movements slowed as he choked. Constance was thrown back again as she tried to intervene and the dark of Aramis’ eyes went white as the fight left him. Rocheforts grip tightened again and he lifted his prey by the throat, slamming his skull back to the stone again. Splinted fingers sagged and lost their grip on the ruffles of Rocheforts doublet and then stilled, eyes closing. Hope left on crows wings.

A pistol reported, and Rochefort bellowed again, for this time the lead had struck true, a bloody hole ripped into his shoulder. He rose to face his new attacker, and there in the doorway stood the rest of the brotherhood, d’Artagnans gun smoking.

Despite the bullet in his shoulder, Rocheforts turned a feral grin on them.  
“How does it feel to always come too late?”

Anne felt a sob tear through her at their expressions.  
Rocheforts voice was a jarring sibilance.  
"You came for your proud brother, did you not? To find this beaten cur instead!"

A collective snarl and Rochefort was stepping back, blade in hand and warning them away with it.  
“Traitors, all! You’ll share his fate! I will have you all executed and leave your bodies for the crows to feast on!”

“It is over, Rochefort. We have Vargas. He is with the King as we speak.”

Rochefort stilled, and deflated like knocked dough. The moment his illusion of power shattered was seen by all, and then shrieking madness replaced it.   
Nothing left to fight for but absolute destruction, Rochfort charged screaming at them.  
But he was mad, and Athos was...Athos. He turned Rochforts blade with deadly ease and plunged the tip through his shoulder. It snagged on the mans clavicle, he roared and tore free, dripping gore, but the Compte in his desperation seemed not to feel it, and charged again. Athos stepped lazily aside and his blade drifted up to kiss his foes brow. Blood welled and spilled into Rocheforts remaining eye but he whirled to face them again.   
Porthos stepped forward, unarmed.  
Porthos needed no weapon - Porthos was the weapon. His fist sent Rochfort to his knees with a mighty blow, another and Rocheforts jaw shattered under the force, teeth ripping through cheek and tongue and he screamed again, spraying gore.  
His body breaking long after his mind, still he staggered up again.  
“You can kill me but I've taken him from you.” He gestured at Aramis’ body, still and shattered behind him. He turned to Anne.  
“And the King will forever doubt his Queen now. France is weak and she will fall. You’ll all die, and what they’ll do to you, Anne, will make you wish you had agreed to be mine. What they’ll do to your little bastard-”

Aramis didn't know how not to fight. He would die defiant. Coughs ripped from his bruising throat, he arched against the floor, reaching blindly. Sight failing, Aramis questing fingers found his fallen dagger and he swung out at the formless nightmare with the last of his strength. The blade was keen and luck or angels guided the steel as it sliced through leather and flesh. There was an awful scream as the sinews in Rocheforts ankle ripped apart with an audible snap, and he crumpled like a marionette, his leg useless.  
Sobbing and laughing, Rochfort scrabbled at his leg. Aramis had stilled beside him, breath shallow and eyes unseeing. The dagger lay red and silver between them, and Rochforts fingers closed over it. His face twisting, he brought it high over his defenceless foe, but d’Artagnan was there with the speed of a hawk, brown hands halting the blade. He could have twisted it aside, he could have taken it from the madman's weakening grip, but he did not. He clamped his fingers down over Rocheforts, forcing him to grip the hilt, and with a strength unthought of in his slender frame he turned it, around and up, the deadly tip pointing towards the heavens. Still he did not stop, and Rochfort could not fight it and could not let go, he could do nothing but scream helplessly through his broken mouth as d’Artagnan pressed the point into the flesh under his chin, through the loop of bone in the jaw, steel visible in his wounded maw as his screams turned to gurgles, and finally an echoing silence as the metal plunged home.  
They avenged their brothers brutalization with naked steel, and the fire in their eyes was the last Rochefort saw as life left his.

“No no no!” The sound was high and desperate, a woman's despair.  
No, not a woman's. The Queens.  
Blood of Emperors and wed to a King, she was crumpled in her silks on the floor, slender fingers softly smoothing a still brow, her other hand gentle at the nape of his neck.  
“Please Aramis!” She shook him, his dark curls drifting as her breath touched him  
“Aramis?”  
He did not move as a warm tear splashed his bruised cheek.  
“ _Breathe_!”

 

 


End file.
